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George Eliot 

Courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery 










GEORGE ELIOT S 

W 

MILL ON THE FLOSS 


EDITED BY 

MAX HERZBERG 

HEAD OF THE DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH 
CENTRAL HIGH SCHOOL 
NEWARK, NEW JERSEY 

With Decorations hy 
YNGVE EDWARD SODERBERG 



D. C. HEATH AND COMPANY 

BOSTON NEW YORK CHICAGO 

ATLANTA SAN FRANCISCO DALLAS 

LONDON 




JU <1 






HEATH'S GOLDEN KEY SERIES 

The following titles, among many others, are available 
or in preparation: 


POETRY 


Arnold’s sohrab and rustum and other poems 
browning’s shorter poems 
french’s recent poetry 
GUINDON AND O’Keefe’s 
poetry 

milton’s shorter poems 
scott’s lady of the lake 
Tennyson’s idylls of the king 


JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL 






E 

yw 


t 


o 


FICTION 

cooper’s LAST OF THE MOHICANS 
ELIOT’S SILAS MARNER 
ELIOT’S MILL ON THE FLOSS 

hawthorne’s house of the seven gables 

TALES FROM HAWTHORNE 

dickens’s tale of two cities ( entire) 

dickens’s tale of two cities {edited for rapid reading) 

scott’s ivanhoe 

SCOTT’S QUENTIN DURWARD 

WILLIAMS AND LIEBER’s PANORAMA OF THE SHORT 
STORY 

OTHER TITLES 


ADDISON AND STEELE’S SIR ROGER DE COVERLEY 
PAPERS 

boswell’s life of Johnson ( selections) 
burke’s on conciliation 

PHILLIPS AND GEISLER’s GLIMPSES INTO THE WORLD 
OF SCIENCE 

LOWELL’S A CERTAIN CONDESCENSION AND DEMOCRACY 
{with other essays on international good and bad will) 
macaulay’s Johnson 

FRENCH AND GODKIN’s OLD TESTAMENT NARRATIVES 

Shakespeare’s julius caesar 
Shakespeare’s midsummer night’s dream 


By D. 
Printed 


Copyright, 1929 

C. Heath and Company 
2 e 9 

in theUnited States of America 

©CIA 12100 



as 




PREFACE 


I N PREPARING this edition of a great novel, it has been 
the point of view of the editor that The Mill on the Floss 
cannot be properly understood without a fairly intimate 
knowledge of the great woman who wrote it and of the 
times in which she lived. For The Mill on the Floss is, in 
large part, an autobiography of George Eliot and an expres¬ 
sion of her deepest thoughts on life. To make this clear a . 
full account is given of George Eliot’s literary and personal 
development and of the Victorian Age. 

Inasmuch as The Mill on the Floss is, furthermore, one of 
the earliest and still one of the best of that class of fiction 
known as the psychological novel, stress is laid on matters 
of fiction technique, both in the introduction and in the 
exercises, so that from this novel the pupil may go on to the 
reading of other similar novels and may be furnished with 
standards for the judging of fiction generally. 

Of special interest to teachers will be the full and fresh 
exercises. Some of these have been grouped to meet the 
needs of teachers, whose pupils are sectioned for ability; but 
the divisions so made are neither rigid nor dogmatic, and 
may be altered to suit the conditions in individual classes. 

The text has been very slightly abridged, mainly in the 
case of passages of theological content. 


M. J. H. 



, 

. 



S '& , 







































































CONTENTS 

PAGE 

. Introduction . ix 

BOOK FIRST 

Boy and Girl 

CHAPTER 

I. Outside Dorlcote Mill . 1 

II. Mr. Tulliver, of Dorlcote Mill, Declares his Reso¬ 
lution about Tom. 4 

III. Mr. Riley Gives his Advice concerning a School 

for Tom . 10 

IV. Tom is Expected . 24 

V. Tom Comes Home . 30 

VI. The Aunts and Uncles are Coming. 41 

VII. Enter the Aunts and Uncles. ' . 54 

VIII. Mr. Tulliver Shows his Weaker Side. 77 

IX. To Garum Firs .. 88 

X. Maggie Behaves Worse than She Expected. 104 

XI. Maggie Tries to Run Away from her Shadow .... Ill 

XII. Mr. and Mrs. Glegg at Home. 124 

XIII. Mr. Tulliver Further Entangles the Skein of Life 136 

BOOK SECOND 

School-Time 

I. Tom’s “ First Half ” . 140 

II. The Christmas Holidays . 162 

III. The New Schoolfellow . 170 

IV. “ The Young Idea ” . 177 

V. Maggie’s Second Visit . 189 

VI. A Love Scene . 194 

VII. The Golden Gates are Passed. 200 


v 





















VI 


CONTENTS 


BOOK THIRD 
The Downfall 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. What Had Happened at Home . 208 

II. Mrs. Tulliver’s Teraphim, or Household Gods ... 215 

III. The Family Council . 220 

IV. A Vanishing Gleam . 237 

V. Tom Applies his Knife to the Oyster. 242 

VI. Tending to Refute the Popular Prejudice against 

the Present of a Pocket-knife . 255 

VII. How a Hen Takes to Stratagem. 263 

VIII. Daylight on the Wreck. 275 

IX. An Item Added to the Family Register. 284 

BOOK FOURTH 
The Valley of Humiliation 

I. A Variation of Protestantism Unknown to Bossuet 291 

II. The Torn Nest is Pierced by the Thorns. 296 

III. A Voice From the Past . 303 

BOOK FIFTH 
Wheat and Tares 

I. In the Red Deeps . 320 

II. Aunt Glegg Learns the Breadth of Bob’s Thumb 334 

III. The Wavering Balance . 353 

IV. Another Love-scene . 360 

V. The Cloven Tree . 367 

VI. The Hard-won Triumph . 380 

VII. A Day of Reckoning . 385 

BOOK SIXTH 
The Great Temptation 

I. A Duet in Paradise. 393 

II. First Impressions . 403 

III. Confidential Moments . 417 





















CONTENTS vii 

CHAPTER PAGE 

IV. Brother and Sister . 422 

V. Showing That Tom had Opened the Oyster. 430 

VI. Illustrating the Laws of Attraction . 435 

VII. Philip Re-enters . 447 

VIII. Wakem in a New Light . 462 

IX. Charity in Full Dress . 470 

X. The Spell Seems Broken . 481 

XI. In the Lane . 488 

XII. A Family Party . 495 

XIII. Borne Along by the Tide. 502 

XIV. Waking . 517 

BOOK SEVENTH 
The Final Rescue 

I. The Return to the Mill . 529 

II. St. Ogg’s Passes Judgment . 537 

III. Showing that Old Acquaintances are Capable of 

Surprising Us . 546 

IV. Maggie and Lucy. 553 

V. The Last Conflict . 561 

Conclusion . 573 

Notes . 575 

Questions on the Story . 586 

Topics for Themes, Oral and Written . 589 

The Technique of The Mill on the Floss . 598 

Suggestions for Additional Reading .. 601. 

























INTRODUCTION 


My only desire is to know the truth , my only fear is to cling to error. 
—From a letter of George Eliot 

The Life of George Eliot 

T WO remarkable women were born within six months of 
each other — a young princess named Victoria, on May 
24, 1819, and Mary Ann (later Marian) Evans, on Novem¬ 
ber 22, 1819. Neither, at her birth, seemed destined for 
great things; and yet the one became the ruler for many 
decades of the far-flung British realm and gave her name to 
the Victorian era; and the other, after years of preparation, 
became a great novelist, whose work in many ways is typi¬ 
cal of those qualities that we associate with the reign of 
Queen Victoria. 

George Eliot was born in Shakespeare’s county, Warwick¬ 
shire; and her birthplace, Arbury Farm, was a quiet brown 
house set among apple trees. This and the places in which 
she later resided were described in many of her stories. Her 
father, Robert Evans, was a capable man who acted as agent 
for a number of landowners. George Eliot used him, in part, 
as the model for Adam Bede, in the novel by that name: 
“ A large-boned, muscular man nearly six feet high, with 
a back so flat and a head so well poised, that when he 
drew himself up to take a more distant survey of his work, 
he had the air of a soldier standing at ease. The sleeves 
rolled up above the elbow showed an arm that was likely 
to win the prize for feats of strength; yet the long, supple 
hand, with its broad finger-tips, looked ready for works of 
skill.” 

George Eliot’s mother was Robert Evans’s second wife. 
She married him as a widower with two children; two other 


IX 


X 


INTRODUCTION 


children, Christina and Isaac, were born to them, and then 
Mary Ann. George Eliot’s rich and happy childhood in 
rural Warwickshire is forever immortalized in fiction in the 
earlier parts of The Mill on the Floss. She was devoted to 
her brother Isaac, and became his constant slave and at¬ 
tendant. Her nature being, however, passionate and sensi¬ 
tive, she took many bruises; her health, too, was delicate, 
and from a child to her last years she suffered from constant 
headaches. For a time she was sent off to school, and then 
her great joy was to get home again and see her beloved 
Isaac once more. To her father she was (like Maggie Tul- 
liver) “the little wench.” Frequently he would drive lei¬ 
surely along, his little Mary Ann standing between his knees 
and absorbing with her quick mind the landscape and the 
human beings they met. 

Here is one picture given of these childhood days of 
George Eliot: 

“ Anyone, about this time, who happened to look through 
the window on the left-hand side of the door of Griff House 
would have seen a pretty picture in the dining-room on 
Saturday evenings 'after tea. The powerful middle-aged 
man with the strongly marked features sits in his deep 
leather-covered arm-chair, at the right-hand corner of the 
ruddy fireplace, with the head of ‘ the little wench ’ be¬ 
tween his knees. The child turns over the book with pic¬ 
tures that she wishes her father to explain to her — or that, 
perhaps, she prefers explaining to him. Her rebellious hair 
is all over her eyes, much vexing the pale, energetic mother 
who sits on the opposite side of the fire, cumbered with 
much service, letting no instant of time escape the inevita¬ 
ble click of the knitting needles — accompanied by epigram¬ 
matic speech. The elder girl, prim and tidy, with her work 
before her, is by her mother’s side; and the brother, between 
the two groups, keeps assuring himself by perpetual search 
that none of his favorite means of amusement is escaping 
from his pockets.” 

Her mother died when George Eliot was eighteen; and 
after her sister Christina’s marriage the following year, 


LIFE OF GEORGE ELIOT 


xi 


George Eliot became her father’s housekeeper. The tradi¬ 
tions of her mother’s family (the Dodsons of The Mill on the 
Floss ) were capably continued by the young woman as mis¬ 
tress of a busy farmhouse. Her vivid accounts of dairying 
in her stories were based directly on her own experiences. 
George Eliot had large, finely shaped hands, and it is said 
that she took great pride in the fact that one hand was 
larger than the other, owing to her strenuous housekeeping 
duties in making cheese and butter at Griff. 

All through these years she devoted herself single- 
mindedly to her family duties, but she did not neglect mat¬ 
ters of culture and of the spirit. She studied German and 
Italian, and did an immense amount of miscellaneous read¬ 
ing; she was absorbed in music, and in religion became 
evangelical (see note to page 142). Yet, with the force of 
her genius working within her, life in many ways must have 
seemed narrow to her, and she must have welcomed the 
change when, in 1841, Mr. Evans removed from Griff, 
George Eliot’s home since her infancy, to Foleshill Road, 
near Coventry, where the two lived in a semidetached 
suburban villa with a garden. 

At Coventry, a town of ancient traditions and consider¬ 
able size, George Eliot made new friendships that altered 
her life profoundly. Particularly was she influenced by the 
Brays, the family of a wealthy ribbon manufacturer, with 
a taste for literature and with a tendency toward free- 
thinking in religious matters. At Coventry too she found 
teachers who advanced her studies in music and who taught 
her Greek and Latin. 

Through a connection of the Brays George Eliot was per¬ 
suaded to undertake the translation from the German of a 
famous work of scholarship — Strauss’s Life of Christ. The 
task required much will power and much energy, and in 
addition she had to teach herself a good deal of Hebrew. 
Often she wanted to give up the “ soul-stupefying labor,” 
and she spoke of herself as " Strauss-sick,” but she per¬ 
severed, and when the work appeared — anonymously — it 
won many plaudits. She was happy at the outcome, and 


Xll 


INTRODUCTION 


then refreshed her mind in characteristic fashion — by read¬ 
ing Shakespeare through from end to end. 

By this time George Eliot had given up many of her strict 
religious views; she no longer objected, as she once had done, 
to the theater or to merrymaking. Her father at this time 
was constantly ill, and George Eliot was a devoted nurse. 
She obtained some relaxation by beginning a translation of 
a Latin work of the great philosopher Spinoza. The end 
came for her father in May 1849. “ What shall I be with¬ 
out my father? ” she exclaimed in grief. “ It will seem as if 
part of my moral nature were gone.” 

The Brays sought to console her by taking her along on a 
trip to the Continent; and at Geneva she settled for a while 
in a pension , where she made new friends and received new 
impressions. Later she returned to England to stay for six¬ 
teen months with the Brays. 

Then George Eliot began her career in earnest. She ac¬ 
cepted a position as assistant editor of the Westminster 
Review, a magazine of serious discussion, and went to live in 
London at the home of the editor, John Chapman. She com¬ 
posed for this magazine many weighty essays, but more im¬ 
portant for her welfare were the numerous friendships she 
formed with leading literary men and women in London. To 
Chapman’s office came Thackeray, Dickens, Carlyle, Her¬ 
bert Spencer, Harriet Martineau, Mrs. Gaskell, and many 
other eminent persons; and occasionally such visitors from 
abroad as Emerson, whom George Eliot greatly admired. 
She made constant visits to operas, concerts, lectures, 
and picture galleries. With the noted thinker Spencer 
she became quite intimate, and at one time it was rumored 
that they would be married; but Spencer seems to have 
thought George Eliot too intellectual and too combative to 
make a fit wife for him; and perhaps she was just as well 
off in not marrying a man who (the story tells), when he 
reached a point in an argument when he no longer cared to 
listen to what his opponent had to say, put on a pair of ear 
muffs that he kept handy. 

But it was Spencer, singularly enough, who first intro- 


LIFE OF GEORGE ELIOT 


siii 

duced her to the man destined to become George Eliot’s 
husband — George Henry Lewes. Lewes was a very plain 
man, deeply pitted with the smallpox, but with bright, viva¬ 
cious, and well-shaped eyes and bright brown hair. He was 
a charming companion, who kept any company in which he 
was present amused by his wit and vivacity. He was a 
clever writer, able to turn his hand to anything; and his 
Life of Goethe is still read. Lewes had been unfortunate in 
his marriage experience and did not live with his wife; but 
the strict laws of England, which required that no marriage 
could be dissolved except by special Act of Parliament, pre¬ 
vented him from getting a divorce. He had three sons. 

It soon became apparent to George Eliot and Lewes that 
they wished to get married, but the law stood in their way. 
After much meditation they decided to disregard the law, 
and they entered into a lifelong companionship, regarded 
by both of them as a sacred marriage; George Eliot dedi¬ 
cated a number of her books to her “ beloved husband, 
George Henry Lewes.” Some of her friends were at first 
estranged by the step she had taken, but most persons came 
in time to regard the arrangement as a true marriage. To 
her husband’s three sons George Eliot was the kindest of 
foster-mothers, and the letters they exchanged present a 
most attractive picture of their relations. It may also be 
noted that before George Eliot took the decisive step, she 
consulted with Lewes’s first wife. 

For a time George Eliot and Lewes continued their re¬ 
spective tasks of authorship and editorship. Then, one day, 
Lewes made a suggestion to his wife that had already, some 
years before, been given her by Spencer — that she write 
fiction. She began to write a story — the first of the Scenes 
of Clerical Life. The success of this, when it appeared in 
Blackwood’s Magazine, was decided; and when the others 
followed and were then published in book form, there re¬ 
mained no doubt in any one’s mind that a great new novelist 
had appeared in English literature. These, and all the suc¬ 
ceeding books of George Eliot with a single exception, ap¬ 
peared not under her real name but under the pen name 


XIV 


INTRODUCTION 


by which she has become famous. The “ George ” was taken 
from her husband’s name; “ Eliot ” was selected as a “ good 
mouth-filling, easily pronounced word.” No one, not even 
her publisher, knew the secret for a time; not even the great 
success of Adam Bede in 1858 sufficed to draw George Eliot 
out of the retirement of her pseudonym; and it was not until 
the publication of The Mill on the Floss in 1859 that George 
Eliot’s real name was disclosed. She continued, however, to 
publish her books under her pen name. 

Silas Marner, a novelette, followed The Mill on the Floss. 
At this point George Eliot found that the materials which 
she had been drawing from her recollections of rural life 
were somewhat exhausted, and she turned instead to writing 
a novel based on history and with materials drawn from 
books. She read a whole library to write Romola, in which 
the Italian religious reformer Savonarola is a chief figure. 
Of this book George Eliot said that she began it a young 
woman and finished it an old woman. To recuperate, she 
took a holiday in the Isle of Wight where there were cows 
(George Eliot, once a notable dairy woman, continued to 
adore cows). More or less as a recreation, too, she turned 
to the writing of poetry, although she never was very suc¬ 
cessful in this realm. Felix Holt was a novel of political 
life; and Middlemarch, which attained a huge success, dis¬ 
cussed middle-class people living in a middle-class town and 
disturbed by the problems which, in the Victorian era, oc¬ 
cupied people’s minds. Daniel Deronda, on which George 
Eliot again spent infinite pains, is a study of the Jewish 
problem and an interesting forerunner of Zionism. 

In 1873 George Eliot wrote: “ Our children are prosperous 
and happy — we have abundant wealth for more than our 
actual needs; and our unspeakable joy in each other has no 
other alloy than the sense that it must one day end in part¬ 
ing.” That parting did not come, however, until November 
28, 1878, when George Eliot’s companion and friend passed 
away. Throughout their lives together his encouragement, 
insight, and help had supported George Eliot constantly. 
The blow was a great one to her, and she saw no one except 


LIFE OF GEORGE ELIOT 


xv 


the eldest son, Charles Lewes. Nevertheless, greatly to the 
surprise of those who knew her, on May 6, 1880, George 
Eliot married an old friend, the American banker, J. W. 
Cross. She wrote to a friend just before the ceremony: “ I 
am going to do what not very long ago I should myself have 
pronounced impossible for me, and therefore I do not wonder 
at anyone else who finds my action incomprehensible.” The 
marriage was due perhaps to George Eliot’s sensitiveness in 
having for so many years been subject to criticism for her 
earlier companionship. But the step was a happy one for 
her and restored her tranquillity. Toward the end of that 
year, however, she fell seriously ill and died on December 22, 
1880. She was buried in Highgate Cemetery, in a grave next 
to that of Lewes. 

George Eliot was sensitive about her looks and always 
refused to be photographed; indeed, she even refused to.be 
sketched. As a girl such beauty as she possessed lay rather 
in expression than in features, although she had an attrac¬ 
tive mass of soft, pale-brown hair. Her head was massive, 
her features powerful and rugged, her jaw exceptionally 
square for a woman. Her complexion was sallow, and her 
eyes blue-gray. In her later years she wrote to some one 
who had never seen her: “ Imagine a first cousin of old 
Dante’s — rather smoke-dried — a face with lines in it that 
seem a map of sorrows.” But her face and voice in conver¬ 
sation were energetic with animation. Cross gives this 
glimpse of her as he first saw her in Rome: 

“ I still seem to hear, as I first heard them, the low, 
earnest, deep musical tones of her voice. I still seem to 
see the fine brows with the abundant auburn-brown 
hair framing them, the long head broadening at the back, 
the grey-blue eyes, the finely formed, thin, transparent 
hands.” 

To hear her speak and to converse with her, many famous 
people came to George Eliot’s home, where, to receive visi¬ 
tors, she sat always in the same place, in a low armchair, 
on the left-hand side of the fire. The style of her conversa¬ 
tion, one of them records, “ was perfect; it was quite natu- 


XVI 


INTRODUCTION 


ral, but never slipshod, and the force and sharpness of her 
thought was never lost in worn phrases.” 

Of George Eliot her famous contemporary, Elizabeth Bar¬ 
rett Browning, said that she was “ a large-brained woman 
and a large-hearted man ” in combination. Despite the 
boldness of her position in matters social and religious, she 
was intensely ethical in spirit: what interested her above all 
were conduct and duty. 

She was a notable rebel, and many of the causes for which 
she contended have today been won by those whom she led; 
and yet at heart, one imagines, she longed to conform and 
agree, to be respectable and conventional. She felt it to be 
her duty to revolt against customs and ideas that were out¬ 
worn, but her rebellion gave her pain. Her early training 
had taken from her the gift of cheerfulness, and perhaps it 
was for this gift that she especially cherished Lewes; but 
her oppression at the miseries of the world and the tragedy 
of men’s destinies was often lit up with a keen sense of 
humor and a prevailing benevolence that looked always for 
humanity’s good. She gave freely of her money, her labor, 
and her thought to the alleviation of evil. 


George Eliot as a Novelist — With Special Refer¬ 
ence to “ The Mill on the Floss ” 

When George Eliot was a young woman, one of the 
questions warmly discussed by persons of strongly religious 
tendency was whether it was right to read fiction. The 
grandson of Samuel Richardson, the famous eighteenth- 
century novelist, was a clergyman, for example; and he 
regarded all novel-reading as not only frivolous but sinful. 
He had never thought it right to read one of his grand¬ 
father’s novels; and if he had had his way, doubtless all 
copies of these masterpieces of fiction would have been 
destroyed. 

With a shock of surprise one learns that George Eliot her¬ 
self, during the period when she was under strongly 


evan- 


GEORGE ELIOT AS A NOVELIST 


XVII 


gelical influence, was somewhat doubtful in this matter. 
She wrote to a friend that unquestionably some fiction 
was poisonous, and that therefore it would surely be 
best not to read any fiction. “ If it be said,” she argued, 
“ the mind must have relaxation, ‘ Truth is strange — 
stranger than fiction/ I cannot imagine how the ad¬ 
ventures of some phantom, conjured up by fancy, can 
be more entertaining than the transactions of real speci¬ 
mens of human nature from which we may safely draw 
inferences.” 

But as her mind matured and as she freed herself from 
the prejudices of her youth, her opinion of fiction of course 
changed, although one can see everywhere in her own writ¬ 
ing of fiction the potent influence of her early idea that 
mere entertainment was sinful and that there must be in¬ 
struction at all times. In the account of George Eliot’s life 
mention has already been made of the way in which the sug¬ 
gestion to write fiction came to her, first from Herbert 
Spencer, later from her husband. She must have realized 
what an immensely widened sphere fiction would give to her 
serious ideas, and she seized on the suggestion with avidity. 

Novelists frequently begin writing fiction late in life — 
Richardson at fifty-one, Fielding at thirty-five, Sterne at 
forty-seven, Scott at forty-three; inasmuch as true novels 
demand a deep knowledge of life and the wisdom that ex¬ 
perience brings. George Eliot was thirty-seven years old 
when she began composing the Scenes of Clerical Life. “ It 
had always been a vague dream of mine,” she stated, “ that 
some time or other I might write a novel; and my shadowy 
conception of what the novel was to be varied, of course, 
from one epoch of my life to another. ... I always thought 
I was deficient in dramatic power, both of construction and 
dialogues, but I felt I should be at my ease in the descrip¬ 
tive parts of a novel.” 

Yet when she came to write many of her doubts vanished 
— almost miraculously, it sometimes seemed to her. She 
told Mr. Cross that in all she considered her best work there 
was a “ not herself ” that took possession of her, and that 


XV111 


INTRODUCTION 


she felt her own personality to be merely an instrument 
through which this spirit, as it were, was acting. 

She had a threefold equipment: her observation of life in 
Warwickshire and elsewhere, her own experience of human 
passions, pains, sorrows, joys, and changes, and her wide 
reading. Of these the first was unquestionably the most 
valuable, although in her earlier novels the second played its 
part. 

Like Shakespeare a native of the great and beautiful cen¬ 
tral county of England, George Eliot found in this region 
her finest inspiration. It is said that in her later years she 
thought the pine hills of the south country, in Hampshire 
and Surrey, the loveliest part of England, but it was the un¬ 
dulating lands of Warwickshire, its woods full of bluebells, 
its fox-hunting, its manor houses, its rivers and canals, that 
became the background of her most intimate writing. 

In Daniel Deronda she expresses her belief that “ a hu¬ 
man life should be well rooted in some spot of a native land, 
where it may get the love of tender kinship for the face of 
the earth, for the labors men go forth to, for the sounds and 
scents that haunt it, for whatever will give that early home 
a familiar unmistakable difference amid the future widening 
of knowledge; a spot where the definiteness of early memo¬ 
ries may be inwrought with affection, and kindly acquaint¬ 
ance with all the neighbors, even to the dogs and donkeys, 
may spread as a sweet habit of the blood.” 

So the calm, still life of the rich pasture lands of the 
middle region of England, its farmers, its craftsmen and 
traders, its clergy, doctors, and lawyers, its rural laborers, 
became the theme of her best novels. In them she brings 
back the old days, when coaches still ran in glory, when the 
countryside was a place of peace and contentment, when all 
seemed well — although there might be many evils con¬ 
cealed beneath the surface or inherent in the character 
of men. 

Her goal, whatever her subject, was (as she says in Adam 
Bede ) “ to give a faithful account of men and things as they 
have mirrored themselves in my mind. ... I feel as much 


GEORGE ELIOT AS A NOVELIST 


xix 


bound to tell you precisely as I can what that reflection is, 
as if I were in the witness-box narrating my experiences on 
oath.” 

Always she is the seeker after truths in the religious and 
ethical world as well as the narrator of events. She has an 
intense realization of the moral side of life. She may at 
times be sentimental, but hers is never a mawkish, weepy 
sentimentality. She believes that no one may escape from 
the law that as we sow, so shall we reap; retribution is the 
constant theme and motive of her art, said Lord Acton. 
Often the outcome of her plots is a tragedy, but, like the 
ancient Greeks, she believed that in tragedy there may be 
a cleansing effect and that by pity and terror our emotions 
may be purged. Into her books she usually poured her own 
ideas, for she was an ardent follower of the French philoso¬ 
pher Comte and the positivist system of thought he founded; 
and according to this system, a work of art is a concrete 
realization of philosophic ideas. The conflict between con¬ 
vention and liberty appears in her stories as it did in her 
own life. In this conflict her heroines sometimes fail, but 
it is a noble failure, incurred in the fulfillment of lofty ideals. 

The influence of her times is to be seen in her novels, par¬ 
ticularly in her stress on the formative power of heredity 
and environment and in her recognition of social responsi¬ 
bility— the interest of each in the welfare of all. All char¬ 
acters and situations are in her work viewed in their rela¬ 
tions to the standards of an ideal society. Her notion of 
general social fitness and .happiness modify and direct her 
representation of individual life and character; and in this 
respect she is as a novelist a pioneer and still perhaps 
unique. But it should be added that in this very respect she 
was a highly characteristic representative of the Victorian 
Age and its humanitarianism. 

Into The Mill on the Floss she poured her genius at its 
best. She wrote to her publisher John Blackwood concern¬ 
ing this book (March 22, 1860); 

“ Your letter yesterday morning helped to inspire me for 
the last eleven pages, if they have any inspiration in them, 


XX 


INTRODUCTION 


They were written in a juror, but I dare say there is not a 
word different from what it would have been if I had writ¬ 
ten them at the slowest pace. 

“ I am grateful and yet rather sad to have finished — 
sad that I shall live with my people on the banks of the 
Floss no longer. But it is time that I should go and absorb 
some new life, and gather fresh ideas.” 

In her diary at the same time she wrote: 

“March 21. — Finished this morning The Mill on the 
Floss, writing from the moment when Maggie, carried out 
on the water, thinks of her mother and brother. We hope 
to start for Rome on Saturday, 24th. 

“ The manuscript of The Mill on the Floss bears the fol¬ 
lowing inscription: ‘ To my beloved husband, George Henry 
Lewes, I give this MS. of my third book, written in the sixth 
year of our life together, at Holly Lodge, South Field, 
Wandsworth, and finished 21st March I860.’ ” 

Outstanding in The Mill on the Floss is the fact that so 
much of. the book is autobiographical. It is worth while to 
list some of the specific similarities between the book and 
George Eliot’s own life. Maggie, in her earlier years, is defi¬ 
nitely Mary Ann Evans; and Tom is her brother Isaac, 
while Lucy Deane is drawn from her sister Chrissie. Mr. 
Tulliver is, however, not her father, nor is Mrs. Tulliver 
her mother, but the Dodsons are her mother’s sisters, the 
Pearsons. Maggie reads the same books as Mary Ann did 
— Pilgrim's Progress, for example; Thomas a Kempis’s 
Imitation of Christ, and Defoe’s History of the Devil. Like 
Maggie, she completed Scott’s The Pirate. George Eliot, 
too, ran away to the gypsies; and she offended her brother 
Isaac by her marriage in the way (although not for the 
reason) that Maggie offended Tom when she spoke of marry¬ 
ing Philip Wakem. Both George Eliot and Maggie were 
subject to much depression of spirits; each had the same 
rebellious curls; each was her father’s pet (his “little 
wench ”), while Tom and Isaac were their mother’s favorites. 
George Eliot’s father had a long illness, which may have 
suggested details for the illness of Mr. Tulliver. She and 


GEORGE ELIOT AS A NOVELIST 


xxi 


Isaac were together in the house when their father died, as 
were Tom and Maggie. 

So that even if the story of The Mill on the Floss were not 
so intensely absorbing, and even if the pages of this book 
were not packed so full of the wisdom of human nature, the 
novel would still be greatly worth reading because it is, in 
part, the autobiography of the childhood of one of the most 
remarkable women who ever lived. 

Aside from this autobiographical section, it should be 
noted that the main plot of The Mill on the Floss is, in 
effect, a new treatment of an old theme; namely, the effects 
of a family feud on the fortunes of a young man and a young j 
woman. Most famous of all the treatments of this theme 
is, of course, Romeo and Juliet, by Shakespeare, in which 
the Montagues and the Capulets correspond to the Tullivers 
and the Wakems. Much the same theme has been handled 
by John Keats in his poem, “ The Eve of St. Agnes ”; and, 
more recently, John Galsworthy, in that section of The 
Forsyte Saga called To Let, has given still another version 
of the ancient plot. It is of interest to compare all of these 
with The Mill on the Floss and to decide which is greatest in 
passion, in plausibility, in style, in power to arouse pity for 
the unfortunate persons caught in the web of destiny. 

In almost all George Eliot’s novels the plot hinges, finally, 
upon a struggle in the mind of the hero or heroine as to 
which of two opposite courses he or she shall pursue. The 
struggle usually is between right and wrong; often it turns 
upon allegiance to duty. George Eliot makes it clear that 
she herself admires the strength of soul that resists a course 
(fatal to self-respect. In The Mill on the Floss this crisis 
occurs when Stephen begs Maggie to accompany him on the 
river. We see her ponder and deliberate and then find her 
deciding to do that which is best for her soul, however little 
it leads to her own pleasure or gratification. 

Among George Eliot’s most striking qualities are her 
humor and her gift of sympathy. The one works in with 
the other, to prevent sarcasm and misunderstanding. Par¬ 
ticularly rare is her humor when she is treating characters 


XXII 


INTRODUCTION 


of the lower classes, and she is especially effective in dealing 
with rural figures. Even when she makes a little fun of 
people, as of the Dodsons, it is always with an appreciation 
of their finer qualities. Through her kindly eyes one sees 
the heart of England at its best — the honest simplicity, the 
strong uprightness, the intuitive intelligence of the English 
even when they are lowly and uneducated. 

Sometimes the close of The Mill on the Floss has been 
criticized, as inconsistent with the rest of the novel. Thus 
Swinburne, who thought The Mill on the Floss in its first 
two-thirds “ at once the highest and the purest and the 
fullest example of her magnificent and matchless powers,” 
spoke of “ the horror of inward collapse, the sickness of 
spiritual reaction, the reluctant incredulous rage of disen¬ 
chantment and disgust,” with which one comes upon “ the 
thrice unhappy third part.” Others admit that the con¬ 
cluding chapters give one the impression of hurry, and un¬ 
doubtedly many readers will regret that George Eliot felt it 
necessary to give to the particular qualities that Maggie 
Tulliver possessed a tragic, unhappy close. 

The influence of George Eliot has been great, both on Eng¬ 
lish and on American writers. Her treatment of a definite 
region of England has suggested imitations; in many ways, 
for example, Thomas Hardy and his many followers pursue 
a trail blazed by George Eliot. Abroad, too, particularly in 
France, she has won much esteem. 

Ought readers to have guessed that the name George 
Eliot concealed a woman’s and not a man’s identity? Most 
readers were completely mystified; and at least one male 
imposter turned up and claimed to have written the novels. 
But Charles Dickens very cleverly perceived “ the womanly 
touches in this moving fiction. If they originated with no 
woman, I believe that no man ever before had the art of 
making himself mentally so like a woman since the world 
began.” Jane Welsh Carlyle, despite her cleverness, wrote 
that she conceived Mr. Eliot to be “ a man of middle age, 
with a wife from whom he has got those beautiful feminine 
touches in the book [ Scenes of Clerical Life ] — a good many 


THE VICTORIAN AGE 


xxm 


children and a dog! Not a clergyman, but brother or first 
cousin to a clergyman.” 

Some one once asked Lewes whether he considered that 
there was any sign by which the sex of the author should 
have been recognized. After some hesitation he replied: “ I 
should say that the sign was to be found in the almost en¬ 
tire omission of any reference to field sports in the country.” 


The Victorian Age 

In the account of George Eliot’s life reference was made 
to the fact that the great novelist and the queen who ruled 
over England throughout the whole of the novelist’s career 
were born within a few months of each other. George Eliot 
admired Queen Victoria greatly, and in turn the monarch 
read George Eliot’s successive stories with interest. In many 
ways, as has already been suggested, George Eliot was a 
highly representative author of the Victorian Age. 

Sometimes the characteristics of this age are summed up 
as “ mid-Victorianism,” and the term is frequently used in a 
contemptuous way, to mean a fearsome adherence to con¬ 
vention, an unwillingness to face the facts of life, a hypo¬ 
critical interest in ideals that concealed a ruthless imperial¬ 
ism in politics, and greed for money in private life. Mrs. 
Grundy, a mythical character (originally found in an old 
play), is taken as the patron saint of this era; and “What 
will Mrs. Grundy say?” as its watchword. That is, the 
I British matron of the Victorian Age, with her narrow, in¬ 
flexible rules of propriety, is assumed to exemplify the traits 
of the time most typically. 

But to accept Mrs. Grundy as representative of mid- 
Victorianism is in many respects an injustice. From the 
time that Victoria ascended the throne in 1837 to her death 
in 1901 England underwent tremendous changes, and most 
of them for the better. 

First of all we may note the fact that it was a time of over¬ 
flowing energy. 


XXIV 


INTRODUCTION 


“ The world goes on at a smarter pace now than it did 
when I was a young fellow/’ says Mr. Deane to Tom in The 
Mill on the Floss (see Book VI, Chapter V). “Why, sir, 
forty years ago, when I was much such a strapping young¬ 
ster as you, a man expected to pull between the shafts the 
best part of his life, before he got the whip in his hand. The 
looms went slowish, and fashions didn’t alter quite so fast; 
I’d a best suit that lasted me six years. Everything was on 
a lower scale, sir, — in point of expenditure, I mean. It’s 
this steam, you see, that has made a difference; it drives on 
every wheel double pace, and the wheel of fortune along 
with ’em. ... I don’t find fault with the change, as some 
people do. Trade, sir, opens a man’s eyes; and if the popu¬ 
lation is to get thicker upon the ground, as it’s doing, 
the world must use its wits at inventions of one sort or 
other. . . . Somebody has said it’s a fine thing to make 
two ears of corn grow where only one grew before; but, 
sir, it’s a fine thing, too, to further the exchange of commod¬ 
ities, and bring the grains of corn to the mouths that are 
hungry.” 

In other words, hustling men of business like Mr. Deane 
and his mid-Victorian colleagues fully accepted Emerson’s 
famous dictum that “the greatest meliorator of the world 
is selfish, huckstering trade.” Where the eighteenth-century 
English had been content to lead a life of pleasant leisure, 
their Victorian descendants were men of “ push and go.” 
They appeared to their European neighbors, one writer has 
said, much as the modern American appears to the English¬ 
man of today. Victorian Englishmen were regarded by 
Continental Europeans with awe as fabulously rich; and 
wealth had, indeed, greatly increased in England. Yet the 
Englishman of that time was thrifty as well as prosperous; 
even after he had won success, he usually continued to lead 
a sober, industrious life. He used his money, moreover, in 
a variety of good “ causes,” and British philanthropy during 
this age set an example for the world. 

Philanthropy — “ love of mankind ” literally — leads to 
another aspect of the Victorian era: its increasing democ- 


THE VICTORIAN AGE 


XXV 


racy. During the Victorian Age the suffrage was gradually 
extended downward from one class to another in the succes¬ 
sive reform bills. With the spread of industrialism and the 
constant increase of factories, the conditions under which 
labor worked were often very bad, but gradually the selfish 
attitude of manufacturers was overborne and bills were 
passed in Parliament to improve these conditions. Greatest 
of the political leaders were the giants Disraeli and Glad¬ 
stone. Constitutionalism was completely established, and 
the monarch — even one who became in time so powerful as 
did Victoria — was strictly limited in functions and powers. 
England became one of the world’s great democracies during 
the Victorian Age. 

One might define Victorianism in another way by saying 
that it means “ the age with a conscience.” Despite many 
abuses in politics, in industry, in education, and elsewhere, 
the Victorian man and the Victorian woman were exceed¬ 
ingly sensitive in matters of religion and conduct; and even 
their view of art was influenced by ethical considerations. 
The old certainty in religion gave way under many influ¬ 
ences. Evangelicalism sought to make religion more per¬ 
sonal, and sometimes led to morbid self-reproaches, as in 
the case of George Eliot in her youth. The so-called Oxford 
Movement resulted in the return of many Protestants 
(greatest of whom was John Henry Newman, later Cardinal 
Newman) to the Catholic Church. 

Greatest of all the influences was, however, the new sci¬ 
ence. Highly important discoveries in chemistry, physics, 
and geology culminated in 1859, when Charles Darwin pub¬ 
lished The Origin of Species, one of the most controversial 
books ever issued. In this he enunciated the theory of evo¬ 
lution, which to some seemed in contradiction to statements 
made in the Bible, and as a result religious doubt became 
prevalent among the intellectual classes in England. Fre¬ 
quently this hardened into what was named agnosticism 
(the doctrine which says, 11 1 don’t know, and I don’t believe 
any one can know ”) or into attempts to form a code of 
ethics without the help of religious beliefs. One such code, 


XXVI 


INTRODUCTION 


worked out by the French thinker Comte, was called posi¬ 
tivism , and greatly interested George Eliot. 

The advance of science led, of course, to many new inven¬ 
tions, and the outward aspect of the age was more and more 
rapidly altered by the coming of the steam engine, of the 
railroad, of gas lighting, of electrical devices, and of many 
other discoveries in the industrial realm. Many of these 
inventions came from other countries like the United States 
and Germany, but England was quick to adopt them in its 
factories and in transforming people’s daily lives. On the 
other hand, the “age of the machine” produced a reaction 
in sensitive minds, which foresaw the turning of human be¬ 
ings themselves into highly standardized creatures leading 
monotonous lives, and which lamented the destruction of the 
beauties of the English landscape by belching smoke and 
yawning mine pits. This reaction was led by John Ruskin, 
who in the very midst of the Victorian Age and despite the 
glittering triumphs of its industry, invention, and commerce, 
preached the supremacy of the soul and urged that even in 
the bitter competition of modern business love, sympathy, 
and generosity might play their part. He wished the Ten 
Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount to be re¬ 
garded in the market place and the office no less than in the 
home; and his teachings must be regarded as being every 
bit as “ Victorian ” or “ mid-Victorian ” as the prudish in¬ 
junctions of the alleged Mrs. Grundy. 

In another direction Ruskin exerted a remarkable influ¬ 
ence. The coming of the Machine Age had brought with it 
machine-made goods, all alike in pattern and generally ugly; 
for at first manufacturers sought immediate utility and quick 
profits and despised mere beauty of appearance. But Rus¬ 
kin preached against such notions and undertook a crusade 
in behalf of beauty in everyday life. He strove to inculcate 
a true appreciation of the artist and his craft, and his doc¬ 
trines were so inspiring that a group of younger men, led 
by the poet William Morris, sought to carry them into ef¬ 
fect. Morris revived the handicrafts of weaving and print¬ 
ing. He revived the craft of painting on glass for beautify- 


THE VICTORIAN AGE xxvii 

ing churches and chapels, largely on models taken from the 
Middle Ages; he designed wall-paper and furniture (the 
morris chair, for example), built houses, and founded a new 
profession — interior decorating. In time, his ideals worked 
their way into industry; and in our own day manufacturers 
are eager to make things beautiful as well as useful; and 
automobiles, furnaces, refrigerators, office furniture, and 
many other articles of common use testify in their beauty 
of design to the influence of these Victorians — Ruskin and 
Morris. 

Many other great authors besides those already men¬ 
tioned added luster to this age — great poets like Tennyson, 
Browning, Mrs. Browning, Matthew Arnold, Swinburne, 
Rossetti, and Meredith; great fiction writers like Dickens, 
Thackeray, the Bronte sisters, Kingsley, Meredith, Hardy, 
Stevenson, and Kipling; great essayists like Macaulay, Car¬ 
lyle, Arnold, Pater, and a host of lesser names. These writers 
produced a mass of poetry unrivaled in any other era; and 
the characters in novel and short story that they created 
make possibly the most notable of all such groups in the 
history of literature. In every direction they were alive, 
seeking new ideas and new ideals and embodying them in 
newly invented or newly revived forms. The Victorian Age 
is one of the great epochs of all literature. 

Did the mid-Victorians look any different from the peo¬ 
ple of today? Not in many ways, except that of course cer¬ 
tain fashions ruled in dress which to us seem either ridicu¬ 
lous or quaint — until we remember that our own fashions 
will undoubtedly seem just as funny or odd to the next 
generation. 

Perhaps the most strikingly Victorian object of dress was 
the hoop skirt, made of crinoline, which descended to the 
ground and, indoors at least, trailed along the floor. The 
wasplike waist was much admired. Women wore masses of 
hair, real or artificial, rolled up in chignons — knots at the 
back of the head; or else the hair escaped in ringlets on 
either side. Women’s hats were elevated behind to make 
room for the ball of hair in its silken net. Men wore beards 


xxviii INTRODUCTION 

and sidewhiskers more generally than is the case today; and 
the high silk hat was the symbol of respectability in the mid¬ 
dle and upper classes — worn on every ceremonial occasion, 
sported even at the seaside, and inevitable on the head of 
every clerk on his way to work. 

In general, then, we must see in George Eliot’s Victorian 
Age some weaknesses and many merits. People were so 
serious that at times they became stodgy; their ideas of pro¬ 
priety in dress, in speech, and in manner were perhaps 
carried to an unwise extreme, and natural freedom was un¬ 
necessarily restrained; their homes, with their ugly horse¬ 
hair furniture, their closed windows, and their ugly decora¬ 
tions, were unattractive. But they themselves initiated 
many reforms, and their energy in all directions was so 
great that the nineteenth century in England must be reck¬ 
oned one of the world’s most important eras in science, 
commerce, invention, literature, art, and humanitarian prog¬ 
ress. At the heart of the Victorian Age was the conviction 
that genius itself was incomplete unless it served moral 
aims, and to that conviction the people of England and else¬ 
where will sooner or later undoubtedly return. 


How To Study a Novel 

Novels, today the most popular of all forms of writing, 
are a comparatively recent development in literature. 

In the beginnings of the literatures of most countries one 
finds epics, long narratives written in verse; and the novel 
is sometimes called a “ prose epic.” But the true epic’gen¬ 
erally deals with some subject of great national or racial 
importance, the style is dignified, the hero is always a man 
of eminence. The novel, on the other hand, may deal with 
the trivial things of everyday life, the plot may similarly be 
concerned with events merely of limited personal interest, 
the language is that of ordinary intercourse, the hero gen¬ 
erally a person from the middle or lower classes. 

In the later stages of Greek literature, one finds, prose 


HOW TO STUDY A NOVEL 


XXIX 


novels were composed; and one of the earliest examples of 
prose fiction as we have it today is the novel Satyricon, by 
the Latin writer Petronius. Ancient China, too, possessed 
some well-written and amusing novels. During the Middle 
Ages books like Malory’s Le Morte D’Arthur contained the 
materials for novels, and one sees the beginnings of modern 
fiction in Cervantes’s Don Quixote, Sidney’s Arcadia, Lyly’s 
Euphues, and the gigantic romances of Madeleine de 
Scuderi. 

The first true novel, however, in the opinion of literary 
historians, was The Princess of Cleves, a French tale pub¬ 
lished in 1678 by Madame de la Fayette. Then, in the 
middle of the eighteenth century in England, there came a 
great outburst of novel writing; and such authors as Defoe, 
Swift, Richardson, Fielding, Smollett, Sterne, and Gold¬ 
smith produced a host of masterpieces. England has con¬ 
tinued up to the present time to be fertile in great novels: 
in the nineteenth century Scott, Jane Austen, Disraeli, the 
Bronte sisters, Dickens, Thackeray, George Eliot, Kingsley, 
Reade, Trollope, Stevenson, Kipling, Hardy, Meredith, and 
many others; and in the twentieth century Galsworthy, 
Wells, Bennett, Conrad, Barrie, Walpole, Hewlett, Ervine, 
Sheila Kaye-Smith, Rose Macaulay, Zangwill, G. B. Stern, 
Leonard Merrick, and a host of other novelists continue to 
maintain the eminence of England in this field. 

In France Balzac, Dumas, Zola, Daudet, Flaubert, Proust, 
Merimee, and Hugo; in Russia Tolstoy, Dostoievski, Tur¬ 
genev, and Gorky; in Italy Manzoni and D’Annunzio; in 
Germany Sudermann, Heyse, and Fritz Reuter; in Scan¬ 
dinavia Bjornson and Selma Lagerlof; and in the United 
States Hawthorne, Mark Twain, James, Howells, Crane, 
Frank Norris, Dreiser, Cabell, Hergesheimer, Edith Whar¬ 
ton, Willa Cather, Ellen Glasgow, Lewis, and Booth Tark- 
ington are others who have produced great novels. 

Both novels and dramas tell stories: how do they differ? 
Prose fiction is distinguished from prose drama by the fact 
that, in addition to dialogue, it uses descriptive and narra¬ 
tive matter to explain the course of the plot. 


XXX 


INTRODUCTION 


Novels are often divided into realistic and romantic fic¬ 
tion. In the former the attempt is made to describe life as 
it really is, whereas in romantic fiction the author relates 
his dream of an unreal world, where courage and nobility 
rule, and the virtuous are always duly rewarded. 

Somewhat different is the distinction between adventure 
novels and 'psychological novels. In the former the emphasis 
is entirely on outward events, on physical happenings. In 
the latter the interest is in the mental life of the characters, 
their ideas and feelings. George Eliot is one of the earliest 
of writers to compose psychological novels. 

Fiction is distinguished, too, by its length. Long narra¬ 
tives are true novels. Shorter ones (like Silas Marner) are 
novelettes. Brief tales are usually called “short stories”; 
and if these words are hyphenated, it is to convey the idea 
that the short-story is strongly unified, as in the tales of 
Edgar Allan Poe. 

Somewhat different from other novels is the allegory, of 
which the greatest example is John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Prog¬ 
ress, referred to so often in The Mill on the Floss. In this 
story the life of man is typified by the adventures of Chris¬ 
tian as he attempts to reach the Celestial City. 

Important elements in any story are the plot, the charac¬ 
ters, the setting, the central idea, and the style. 

A plot may be only a series of events placed one after 
another, like blocks in a line; or there may be some logical 
connection, one event flowing smoothly into another, as in 
a stream. One should survey the plot of a novel and ask 
this question: Did the author know when he started exactly 
where he was going? Are the events logically and plausibly 
interwoven? Generally the events of a story lead to a 
climax, or point of greatest excitement; and at the close 
there may be a catastrophe, in which the whole plot termi¬ 
nates. Often a novelist has more than one plot — a main 
plot and one or more subplots. The plot may be original 
and ingenious or commonplace, it may be quiet or thrilling, 
it may consist of physical happenings or events of the mind. 

With some authors the plot is determined by the charac- 


HOW TO STUDY A NOVEL 


XXXI 


ters and grows out of them; in others, the plot is all im¬ 
portant, and the characters are only puppets to act out the 
incidents that have been planned. In which category does 
George Eliot belong? Often the author uses the characters 
to express not the opinions they might naturally be sup¬ 
posed to have but his own views of life. In the case of 
Shakespeare it would be pretty hard to tell which are 
Shakespeare's real opinions, but one wonders if the same is 
true of George Eliot. It is generally conceded by critics 
that it is easier to invent a good plot than to create a con¬ 
vincing character. It is for characters that, for most part, 
we remember novelists. What characters in The Mill on 
the Floss impress themselves on the memory? Some novel¬ 
ists have a wide range of characters; others (because of 
limited experience) have only a few vital characters. The 
skillful novelist allows the reader to become acquainted with 
his characters by what they do and say rather than by what 
he tells about them. Study George Eliot from the viewpoint 
of this statement. 

In the setting is generally included all explanatory as well 
a£ all descriptive matter. Such matter is used to give a 
picture of the plaice in which the action occurs, to provide 
relief, and to add material of interest for its own sake. 
Often passages containing setting are skipped by impatient 
readers, but they do so at the risk of missing data important 
in the development of the plot. George Eliot’s explanatory 
and descriptive passages contain some of her wisest remarks 
on human nature and the meaning of life. From her de¬ 
scriptions, too, one gains a clear idea of the beautiful coun¬ 
try in which The Mill . on the Floss is laid. Her “ local 
color,” as it is called, pictures a region and its inhabitants. 

A novelist usually has some purpose other than to enter¬ 
tain, although the wise story-teller never forgets that his 
first purpose is to tell a good yarn. Some novelists merely 
wish to illustrate an idea they have about life. Others seek 
to carry through a reform — prison reform in Godwin’s 
Caleb Williams , for example; or a hygienic reform in Sin¬ 
clair’s The Jungle. George Eliot was exceedingly serious in 


XXX11 


INTRODUCTION 


her notions of the novelist’s purpose, but she was not espe¬ 
cially interested in specific reforms. 

Style includes many elements, the result of the author’s 
own personality. One ought to be able, after a considera¬ 
tion of the manner in which a novel is written, to answer the 
question: What sort of person does this novelist seem to be ? 
But it may also be used in a narrower sense to indicate such 
matters as diction, the use of dialogue, the employment of 
figures of speech and similar devices, paragraphing, chapter 
divisions, and other like traits. Of George Eliot’s diction it 
can be said immediately that it is strikingly Latinistic in her 
descriptive and explanatory passages; she is what we call 
“ Johnsonian,” and has a great fondness for long, somewhat 
unusual words. On the other hand, her dialogues and some¬ 
times the narrative portions reveal a fine gift for racy, 
idiomatic, homely speech. Sometimes her paragraphs are 
overlong. She had a keen eye for the details of everyday 
life, and one finds them vividly reproduced in her descrip¬ 
tions. At her best her style is as rich and effective as any 
author’s in English literature. 

The close of one’s study of a great novel ought to be fol¬ 
lowed by a period of Reflection and meditation in which one 
asks: Has this novel left on my mind the impression of real 
life? Shall I remember some of these characters? How 
much better do I understand human nature now that I have 
read this story? What other novels does it make me think 
of, and how does it compare with them in greatness? 

Comments of Critics on George Eliot and 
“ The Mill on the Floss ” 

She had remarkable capacity for abstract thinking, which so 
seldom goes along with capacity for concrete representation, 
even in men; among women, such a union of the two as existed 
in her has, I should think, never been paralleled. — Herbert 
Spencer 

The finest thing in that admirable novel [The Mill on the 
Floss ] has always been, to our taste, not its portrayal of the 


COMMENTS OF CRITICS xxxiii 

young girl’s love struggles as regards her lover, but those as 
regards her brother. — Henry James 

George Eliot’s novels are the work of a woman of rare 
genius whose place is, for all time, among the greatest novelists 
our country has produced. — Henry Morley 

The Mill on the Floss is George Eliot’s classic. — Oliver 
Elton 

The first of our women novelists. — J. Logie Robertson 

Her theory of life required her to consider only man’s rela¬ 
tions upon earth with his fellow-men; and, accordingly, she 
defines duty to be that course of action which tends to make 
those around us the happiest possible, or, rather, the least 
miserable. Right and wrong resolve themselves, then, into a 
mere question of results. An act must indicate its near and 
ultimate sequences before its place can be assigned in the cate¬ 
gory of moral acts. — Abba Gould Woolson 

George Eliot’s works mark the climax of the social feeling in 
fiction previous to 1880. They show the social conscience fairly 
awake, and awaiting its summons. — Vida D. Scudder 

The problems of life sometimes swamp George Eliot’s stories 
and make her less than an artist, but what we get from her 
finally is a feeling of humorous and philosophic courage to face 
the problems. — John Macy 

As a writer she was not only a novelist but also a poet, and 
above all a social philosopher. Her ethical bias is so strong, 
moreover, that one cannot understand her as a novelist or a 
poet unless one has grasped her social philosophy and the all- 
pervading and ever-present influence it has upon her mind and 
writing. — Sir Charles Waldston 

George Eliot was really more successful in her novels dealing 
with English country life than in her more studied efforts to 
inject philosophical interpretation of character into her stories. 
She took special interest in portraying wrecked lives, and in 
making clear how and why they became failures. There are 
noteworthy delineations of character in her books. — John L. 
Haney 


XXXIV 


INTRODUCTION 


George Eliot is in the great tradition of the English novel. 
She received that tradition from the past, a great inheritance, 
and she handed it on, not only unimpaired, but a richer 
legacy, to those who came after her. From her the suc¬ 
cession is to Hardy, from Hardy to Phillpotts, from Phill- 
potts to Sheila Kaye-Smith. — Cornelius Weygandt 

She was, like Tennyson, convinced that life is directed by 
Plan and Design. The world exhibits the working out of a 
Will that works by Natural Law and by a Moral Law as inex¬ 
orable as the natural. She felt too the problem of the relation 
of man’s self and his surroundings. Each man changes the 
world, and the world changes him. It was the story of such 
change that interested George Eliot, and it was this story that 
she set herself to tell. — Herbert Bates 

She makes her characters grow. They do not appear at first 
in all their beauty or deformity. We watch them, as it were, 
being moulded by Fate; and she describes the process, in spite 
of all her faults as a woman and a writer, with such skill, such 
sympathy, and such insight that Adam Bede, The Mill on the 
Floss, and Silas Marner are as sure of lasting fame as Ivanhoe, 
David Cojrperfield, Henry Esmond, and Pride and Prejudice. 
— Edwin L. Miller 

Such novels as Silas Marner and The Mill on the Floss are 
great because they paint moving pictures of people like unto 
ourselves, faulty, suffering, and yearning after more than they 
can ever attain. — Charles Raymond 

George Eliot had a remarkably strong, hard, masculine, posi¬ 
tive judging head. — John Morley 

In George Eliot a reader with a conscience may be reminded 
of the saying that when a man opens Tacitus, he puts himself 
into the confessional. — John Morley 

The great Floss, hurrying between green pastures to the sea, 
gives a unity of its own to this story. — Matilde Blind 

The Mill on the Floss is a book of great genius. Its over¬ 
flowing humor would alone class its author high among the 
humorists. — R. H. Hutton 


COMMENTS OF CRITICS 


XXXV 


She, of all novelists, has attacked the profound problems of 
existence. — Edward Eggleston 

No books bear upon their faces more unmistakably the pain 
of moral conflict and the pain of moral victory, only less bitter 
than that of defeat. Great forces warring with one another; a 
sorrowful, a pathetic victory. — Edward Dowden 

George Eliot’s style is rich in beauty and power. It is a 
splendid vehicle. — H. H. Lancaster 

A work [The Mill on the Floss ] in which passion and the 
tumult.of the soul are not objectively analyzed but sympatheti¬ 
cally portrayed, with unsurpassed vividness and elemental 
power. — W. C. Brownell 

No other writer ever lived who had George Eliot’s power of 
manifold, but disinterested and impartially observant sym¬ 
pathy. — Lord Acton 

Once, however, she has taken herself as the direct object of 
study, and created her masterpiece in Maggie Tulliver [The 
Mill on the Floss]. The first two hundred pages of this novel 
are, probably, the most nearly perfect she has written, for the 
faithful evocation of scenic detail as well as of popular cus¬ 
toms, and the astonishing accuracy of the psychology, are the 
outcome of an immediate and infallible impulse, translating 
into words the ever-present vision of the past. — Louis 
Cazamian 




* 



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\ 








V. 




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t 




l 






i 






























THE MILL ON THE FLOSS 


BOOK I —BOY AND GIRL 

CHAPTER I 

OUTSIDE DORLCOTE MILL 

A WIDE plain, where the broadening Floss hurries on be¬ 
tween its green banks to the sea, and the loving tide, 
rushing to meet it, checks its passage with an impetuous em¬ 
brace. On this mighty tide the black ships — laden with 
the fresh-scented fir-planks, with rounded sacks of oil-bearing 
seed, or with the dark glitter of coal — are borne along to 
the town of St. Ogg’s, which shows its aged, fluted red roofs 
and the broad gables of its wharves between the low wooded 
hill and the river-brink, tingeing the water with a soft 
purple hue under the transient glance of this February sun. 
Far away on each hand stretch the rich pastures, and the 
patches of dark earth made ready for the seed of broad¬ 
leaved green crops, or touched already with the tint of the 
tender-bladed autumn-sown corn. There is a remnant still 

1 






2 


MILL ON.THE FLOSS 


of the last year’s golden clusters of beehive-ricks rising at 
intervals beyond the hedgerows; and everywhere the hedge¬ 
rows are studded with trees; the distant ships seem to be 
lifting their masts and stretching their red-brown sails close 
among the branches of the spreading ash. Just by the red- 
roofed town the tributary Ripple flows with a lively current 
into the Floss. How lovely the little river is, with its dark 
changing wavelets! It seems to me like a living companion 
while I wander along the bank, and listen to its low, placid 
voice, as to the voice of one who is deaf and loving. I re¬ 
member those large dipping willows. I remember the stone 
bridge. 

And this is Dorlcote Mill. I must stand a minute or two 
here on the bridge and look at it, though the clouds are 
threatening, and it is far on in the afternoon. Even in this 
leafless time of departing February it is pleasant to look at, 
— perhaps the chill, damp season adds a charm to the trimly 
kept, comfortable dwelling-house, as old as the elms and 
chestnuts that shelter it from the northern blast. The 
stream is brimful now, and lies high in this little withy 
plantation, and half drowns the grassy fringe of the croft in 
front of the house. As I look at the full stream, the vivid 
grass, the delicate bright-green powder softening the outline 
of the great trunks and branches that gleam from under the 
bare purple boughs, I am in love with moistness, and envy 
the white ducks that are dipping their heads far into the 
water here among the withes, unmindful of the awkward ap¬ 
pearance they make in the drier world above. 

The rush of the water and the booming of the mill bring 
a dreamy deafness, which seems to heighten the peacefulness 
of the scene. They are like a great curtain of sound, shut¬ 
ting one out from the world beyond. And now there is the 
thunder of the huge covered wagon coming home with sacks 
of grain. That honest jvagoner is thinking of his dinner, 
getting sadly dry in the oven at this late hour; but he will 
not touch it till he has fed his horses, — the strong, submis¬ 
sive, meek-eyed beasts, who, I fancy, are looking mild re¬ 
proach at him from between their blinkers, that he should 


BOY AND GIRL 


3 


crack his whip at them in that awful manner as if they 
needed that hint! See how they stretch their shoulders up 
the slope toward the bridge, with all the more energy because 
they are so near home. Look at their grand shaggy feet that 
seem to grasp the firm earth, at the patient strength of their 
necks, bowed under the heavy collar, at the mighty muscles 
of their struggling haunches! I should like well to hear 
them neigh over their hardly earned feed of corn, and see 
them, with their moist necks freed from the harness, dip¬ 
ping their eager nostrils into the muddy pond. Now they 
are on the bridge, and down they go again at a swifter pace, 
and the arch of the covered wagon disappears at the turn¬ 
ing behind the trees. 

Now I can turn my eyes toward the mill again, and watch 
the unresting wheel sending out its diamond jets of water. 
That little girl is watching it too; she has been standing on 
just the same spot at the edge of the water ever since I 
paused on the bridge. And that queer white cur with the 
brown ear seems to be leaping and barking in ineffectual 
remonstrance with the wheel; perhaps he is jealous because 
his playfellow in the beaver bonnet is so rapt in its move¬ 
ment. It is time the little playfellow went in, I think; and 
there is a very bright fire to tempt her: the red light shines 
out under the deepening gray of the sky. It is time, too, for 
me to leave off resting my arms on the cold stone of this 
bridge. . . . 

Ah, my arms are really benumbed. I have been pressing 
my elbows on the arms of my chair, and dreaming that I 
was standing on the bridge in front of Dorlcote Mill, as it 
looked one February afternoon many years ago. Before I 
dozed off, I was going to tell you what Mr. and Mrs. Tulliver 
were talking about, as they sat by the bright fire in the left- 
hand parlor, on that very afternoon I have been dreaming of. 


4 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


CHAPTER II 

MR. TULLIVER, OF DORLCOTE MILL, DECLARES HIS 
RESOLUTION ABOUT TOM 

W HAT I want, you know,” said Mr. Tulliver, — “ what 
I want is to give Tom a good eddication; an eddica- 
tion as ’ll be a bread to him. That was what I was thinking 
of when I gave notice for him to leave the academy at Lady- 
day. I mean to put him to a downright good school at Mid¬ 
summer. The two years at th’ academy ’ud ha’ done well 
enough, if I’d meant to make a miller and farmer of him, 
for he’s had a fine sight more schoolin’ nor I ever got. All 
the learnin’ my father ever paid for was a bit o’ birch at 
one end and the alphabet at th’ other. But I should like 
Tom to be a bit of a scholard, so as he might be up to the 
tricks o’ these fellows as talk fine and write with a flourish. 
It ’ud be a help to me wi’ these lawsuits, and arbitrations, 
and things. I wouldn’t make a downright lawyer o’ the 
lad, — I should be sorry for him to be a raskill, — but a 
sort o’ engineer, or a surveyor, or an auctioneer and vallyer, 
like Riley, or one o’ them smartish businesses as are all 
profits and no outlay, only for a big watch-chain and a high 
stool. They’re pretty nigh all one, and they’re not far off 
being even wi’ the law, I believe; for Riley looks Lawyer 
Wakem i’ the face as hard as one cat looks another. He’s 
none frightened at him.” 

Mr. Tulliver was speaking to his wife, a blond comely 
woman in a fan-shaped cap (I am afraid to think how long 
it is since fan-shaped caps were worn, they must be so near 
coming in again. At that time, when Mrs. Tulliver was 
nearly forty, they were new at St. Ogg’s and considered 
sweet things). 

“Well, Mr. Tulliver, you know best: I’ve no objections. 
But hadn’t I better kill a couple o’ fowl, and have th’ aunts 
and uncles to dinner next week, so as you may hear what 
sister Glegg and sister Pullet have got to say about it? 
There’s a couple o’ fowl wants killing! ” 


BOY AND GIRL 


5 


“ You may kill every fowl i’ the yard if you like, Bessy; 
but I shall ask neither aunt nor uncle what I’m to do wi’ 
my own lad,” said Mr. Tulliver, defiantly. 

“ Dear heart! ” said Mrs. Tulliver, shocked at this san¬ 
guinary rhetoric, “ how can you talk so, Mr. Tulliver? But 
it’s your way to speak disrespectful o’ my family; and sister 
Glegg throws all the blame upo’ me, though I’m sure I’m as 
innocent as the babe unborn. For nobody’s ever heard me 
say as it wasn’t lucky for my children to have aunts and 
uncles as can live independent. Howiver, if Tom’s to go to 
a new school, I should like him to go where I can wash him 
and mend him; else he might as well have calico as linen, 
for they’d be one as yallow as th’ other before they’d been 
washed half-a-dozen times. And then, when the box is goin’ 
back’ard and forrard, I could send the lad a cake, or a pork- 
pie, or an apple; for he can do with an extry bit, bless him! 
whether they stint him at the meals or no. My children can 
eat as much victuals as most, thank God! ” 

“ Well, well, we won’t send him out o’ reach o’ the carrier’s 
cart, if other things fit in,” said Mr. Tulliver. “ But you 
mustn’t put a spoke i’ the wheel about the washin’, if we 
can’t get a school near enough. That’s the fault I have to 
find wi’ you, Bessy; if you see a stick i’ the road, you’re 
allays thinkin’ you can’t step over it. You’d want me not to 
hire a good wagoner, ’cause he’d got a mole on his face.” 

“ Dear heart! ” said Mrs. Tulliver, in mild surprise, “ when 
did I iver make objections to a man because he’d got a mole 
on his face? I’m sure I’m rether fond o’ the moles; for my 
brother, as is dead an’ gone, had a mole on his brow. But I 
can’t remember your iver offering to hire a wagoner with a 
mole, Mr. Tulliver. There was John Gibbs hadn’t a mole on 
his face no more nor you have, an’ I was all for having you 
hire him; an’ so you did hire him, an’ if he hadn’t died o’ th’ 
inflammation, as we paid Dr. Turnbull for attending him, 
he’d very like ha’ been drivin’ the wagon now. He might 
have a mole somewhere out o’ sight, but how was I to know 
that, Mr. Tulliver? ” 

“ No, no, Bessy; I didn’t mean justly the mole; I meant 


6 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


it to stand tor summat else; but niver mind — it’s puzzling 
work, talking is. What I’m thinking on, is how to find the 
right sort o’ school to send Tom to, for I might be ta’en in 
again, as I’ve been wi’ th’ academy. I’ll have nothing to do 
wi’ a ’cademy again: whativer school I send Tom to, it 
sha’n’t be a ’cademy; it shall be a place where the lads spend 
their time i’ summat else besides blacking the family’s shoes, 
and getting up the potatoes. It’s an uncommon puzzling 
thing to know what school to pick.” 

Mr. Tulliver paused a minute or two, and dived with both 
hands into his breeches pockets as if he hoped to find some 
suggestion there. Apparently he was not disappointed, for 
he presently said, “ I know what I’ll do: I’ll talk it over wi’ 
Riley; he’s coming to-morrow, t’ arbitrate about the dam.” 

“ Well, Mr. Tulliver, I’ve put the sheets out for the best 
bed, and Kezia’s got ’em hanging at the fire. They aren’t 
the best sheets, but they’re good enough for anybody to sleep 
in, be he who he will; for as for them best Holland sheets, I 
should repent buying ’em, only they’ll do to lay us out in. 
An’ if you was to die to-morrow, Mr. Tulliver, they’re 
mangled beautiful, an’ all ready, an’ smell o’ lavender as it 
’ud be a pleasure to lay ’em out; an’ they lie at the left- 
hand corner o’ the big oak linen-chest at the back: not as I 
should trust anybody to look ’em out but myself.” 

As Mrs. Tulliver uttered the last sentence, she drew a 
bright bunch of keys from her pocket, and singled out one, 
rubbing her thumb and finger up and down it with a placid 
smile while she looked at the clear fire. If Mr. Tulliver had 
been a susceptible man in his conjugal relation, he might 
have supposed that she drew out the key to aid her imagina¬ 
tion in anticipating the moment when he would be in a state 
to justify the production of the best Holland sheets. Hap¬ 
pily he was not so; he was only susceptible in respect of his 
right to water-power; moreover, he had the marital habit 
of not listening very closely, and since his mention of Mr. 
Riley, had been apparently occupied in a tactile examination 
of his woollen stockings. 

“ I think I’ve hit it, Bessy,” was his first remark after a 


BOY AND GIRL 


7 


short silence. “ Riley’s as likely a man as any to know o’ 
some school; he’s had schooling himself, an’ goes about to all 
sorts o’ places, arbitratin’ and vallyin’ and that. And we 
shall have time to talk it over to-morrow night when the 
business is done. I want Tom to be such a sort o’ man as 
Riley, you know, — as can talk pretty nigh as well as if it 
was all wrote out for him, and knows a good lot o’ words as 
don’t mean much, so as you can’t lay hold of ’em i’ law; and 
a good solid knowledge o’ business too.” 

“ Well,” said Mrs. Tulliver, “ so far as talking proper, and 
knowing everything, and walking with a bend in his back, 
and setting his hair up, I shouldn’t mind the lad- being 
brought up to that. But them fine-talking men from the big 
towns mostly wear the false shirt-fronts; they wear a frill 
till it’s all a mess, and then hide it with a bib; I know Riley 
does. And then, if Tom’s to go and live at Mudport, like 
Riley, he’ll have a house with a kitchen hardly big enough 
to turn in, an’ niver get a fresh egg for his breakfast, an’ 
sleep up three pair o’ stairs, — or four, for what I know, — 
and be burnt to death before he can get down.” 

“ No, no,” said Mr. Tulliver, “ I’ve no thoughts of his 
going to Mudport: I mean him to set up his office at St. 
Ogg’s, close by us, an’ live at home. But,” continued Mr. 
Tulliver, after a pause, “ what I’m a bit afraid on is, as Tom 
hasn’t got the right sort o’ brains for a smart fellow. I 
doubt he’s a bit slowish. He takes after your family, 
Bessy.” 

“ Yes, that he does,” said Mrs. Tulliver, accepting_the-Iast 
proposition entirely on its own m erits; “ he’s wonderful for 
liking a deal o’ salt inhis^BrotiT That was my brother’s 
way, and my father’s before him.” 

“ It seems a bit of a pity, though,” said Mr. Tulliver, “ as 
the lad should take after the mother’s side istead o’ the little 
wench. That’s the worst on ’t wi’ the crossing o’ breeds: 
you can never justly calkilate what’ll come on’t. The little 
un takes after my side, now: she’s twice as ’cute as Tom. 
Too ’cute for a woman, I’m afraid,” continued Mr. Tulliver, 
turning his head dubiously first on one side and then on the 



8 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


other. “It’s no mischief much while she’s a little un; but 
an over-’cute woman’s no better nor a long-tailed sheep, — 
she’ll fetch none the bigger price for that.” 

“ Yes, it is a mischief while she’s a little un, Mr. Tulliver, 
for it all runs to naughtiness. How to keep her in a clean 
pinafore two hours together passes my cunning. An’ now 
you put me i’ mind,” continued Mrs. Tulliver, rising and 
going to the window, “ I don’t know where she is now, an’ 
it’s pretty nigh tea-time. Ah, I thought so, — wanderin’ up 
an’ down by the water, like a wild thing; she’ll tumble in 
some day.” 

Mrs-. Tulliver rapped the window sharply, beckoned, and 
shook her head, — a process which she repeated more than 
once before she returned to her chair. 

“ You talk o’ ’cuteness, Mr. Tulliver,” she observed as she 
sat down, “ but I’m sure the child’s half an idiot i’ some 
things; for if I send her upstairs to fetch anything, she for¬ 
gets what she’s gone for, an’ perhaps ’ull sit down on the 
floor i’ the sunshine an’ plait her hair an’ sing to herself like 
a Bedlam creatur’, all the while I’m waiting for her down¬ 
stairs. That niver run i’ my family, thank God! no more 
nor a brown skin as makes her look like a mulatter. I don’t 
like to fly i’ the face o’ Providence, but it seems hard as I 
should have but one gell, an’ her so comical.” 

“Pooh, nonsense! ” said Mr. Tulliver; “she’s a straight, 
black-eyed wench as anybody need wish to see. I don’t 
know i’ what she’s behind other folks’s children; and she 
can read almost as well as the parson.” 

“ But her hair won’t curl all I can do with it, and she’s so 
franzy about having it put i’ paper, and I’ve such work as 
never was to make her stand and have it pinched with th’ 
irons.” 

“ Cut it off — cut it off short,” said the father, rashly. 

“ How can you talk so, Mr. Tulliver? She’s too big a gell 
— gone nine, and tall of her age — to have her hair cut 
short; an’ there’s her cousin Lucy’s got a row o’ curls round 
her head, an’ not a hair out o’ place. It seems hard as my 
sister Deane should have that pretty child; I’m sure Lucy 


BOY AND GIRL 


9 


takes more after me nor my own child does. Maggie, 
Maggie,” continued the mother, in a tone of half-coaxing 
fretfulness, as this small mistake of nature entered the room, 
“ where’s the use o’ my telling you to keep away from the 
water? You’ll tumble in and be drownded some day, an’ 
then you’ll be sorry you didn’t do as mother told you.” 

Maggie’s hair, as she threw off her bonnet, painfully con¬ 
firmed her mother’s accusation. Mrs. Tulliver, desiring her 
daughter to have a curled crop, “ like other folks’s children,” 
had had it cut too short in front to be pushed behind the 
ears; and as it was usually straight an hour after it had been 
taken out of paper, Maggie was incessantly tossing her head 
to keep the dark, heavy locks out of her gleaming black 
eyes, — an action which gave her very much the air of a 
small Shetland pony. 

“ Oh, dear, oh, dear, Maggie, what are you thinkin’ of, to 
throw your bonnet down there? Take it upstairs, there’s a 
good gell, an’ let your hair be brushed, an’ put your other 
pinafore on, an’ change your shoes, do, for shame; an’ come 
an’ go on with your patchwork, like a little lady.” 

“ Oh, mother,” said Maggie, in a vehemently cross tone, 
“ I don’t want to do my patchwork.” 

“ What! not your pretty patchwork, to make a counter¬ 
pane for your aunt Glegg? ” 

“ It’s foolish work,” said Maggie, with a toss of her mane, 

— “ tearing things to pieces to sew ’em together again. And 
I don’t want to do anything for my aunt Glegg. I don’t like 
her.” 

Exit Maggie, dragging her bonnet by the string, while Mr. 
Tulliver laughs audibly. 

“ I wonder at you, as you’ll laugh at her, Mr. Tulliver,” 
said the mother, with feeble fretfulness in her tone. “ You 
encourage her i’ naughtiness. An’ her aunts will have it as 
it’s me spoils her.” 

Mrs. Tulliver was what is called a good-tempered person, 

— never cried, when she was a baby, on any slighter ground 
than hunger and pins; and from the cradle upward had been 
healthy, fair, plump, and dulbwitted; in short, the flower of 


10 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


her family for beauty and amiability. But milk and mild¬ 
ness are not the best things for keeping, and when they turn 
only a little sour, they may disagree with young stomachs 
seriously. I have often wondered whether those early Ma¬ 
donnas of Raphael, with the blond faces and somewhat 
stupid expression, kept their placidity undisturbed when 
their strong-limbed, strong-willed boys got a little too old 
to do without clothing. I think they must have been given 
to feeble remonstrance, getting more and more peevish as it 
became more and more ineffectual. 


CHAPTER III 

MR. RILEY GIVES HIS ADVICE CONCERNING A SCHOOL 
FOR TOM 

T HE gentleman in the ample white cravat and shirt- 
frill, taking his brandy-and-water so pleasantly with 
his good friend Tulliver, is Mr. Riley, a gentleman with a 
waxen complexion and fat hands, rather highly educated for 
an auctioneer and appraiser, but large-hearted enough to 
show a great deal of bonhomie toward simple country ac¬ 
quaintances of hospitable habits. Mr. Riley spoke of such 
acquaintances kindly as “ people of the old school.” 

The conversation had come to a pause. Mr. Tulliver, not 
without a particular reason, had abstained from a seventh 
recital of the cool retort by which Riley had shown himself 
too many for Dix, and how Wakem had had his comb cut 
for once in his life, now the business of the dam had been 
settled by arbitration, and how there never would have been 
any dispute at all about the height of water if everybody 
was what they should be, and Old Harry hadn’t made the 
lawyers. Mr. Tulliver was, on the whole, a man of safe 
traditional opinions; but on one or two points he had trusted 
to his unassisted intellect, and had arrived at several ques¬ 
tionable conclusions; among the rest, that rats, weevils, and 
lawyers were created by Old Harry. Unhappily he had no 


BOY AND GIRL 


11 


one to tell him that this was rampant Manichseism, else he 
might have seen his error. But to-day it was clear that the 
good principle was triumphant: this affair of the water¬ 
power had been a tangled business somehow, for all it 
seemed — look at it one way — as plain as water’s water; 
but, big a puzzle as it was, it hadn’t got the better of Riley. 
Mr. Tulliver took his brandy-and-water a little stronger than 
usual, and, for a man who might be supposed to have a few 
hundreds lying idle at his banker’s, was rather incautiously 
open in expressing his high estimate of his friend’s business 
talents. 

But the dam was a subject of conversation that would 
keep; it could always be taken up again at the same point, 
and exactly in the same condition; and there was another 
subject, as you know, on which Mr. Tulliver was in pressing 
want of Mr. Riley’s advice. This was his particular reason 
for remaining silent for a short space after his last draught, 
and rubbing his knees in a meditative manner. He was not 
a man to make an abrupt transition. This was a puzzling 
world, as he often said, and if you drive your wagon in a 
hurry, you may light on an awkward corner. Mr. Riley, 
meanwhile, was not impatient. Why should he be? Even 
Hotspur, one would think, must have been patient in his 
slippers on a warm hearth, taking copious snuff, and sipping 
gratuitous brandy-and-water. 

“ There’s a thing I’ve got i’ my head,” said Mr. Tulliver 
at last, in rather a lower tone than usual, as he turned his 
head and looked steadfastly at his companion. 

“ Ah! ” said Mr. Riley, in a tone of mild interest. He was 
a man with heavy waxen eyelids and high-arched eyebrows, 
looking exactly the same under all circumstances. This im¬ 
movability of face, and the habit of taking a pinch of snuff 
before he gave an answer, made him trebly oracular to Mr. 
Tulliver. 

“ It’s a very particular thing,” he went on; “ it’s about my 
boy Tom.” 

At the sound of this name, Maggie, who was seated on a 
low stool close by the fire, with a large book open on her lap, 


12 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


shook her heavy hair back and looked up eagerly. There 
were few sounds that roused Maggie when she was dreaming 
over her book, but Tom’s name served as well as the shrill¬ 
est whistle; in an instant she was on the watch, with gleam¬ 
ing eyes, like a Skye terrier suspecting mischief, or at all 
events determined to fly at any one who threatened it 
toward Tom. 

“ You see, I want to put him to a new school at Midsum¬ 
mer,” said Mr. Tulliver; “he’s cornin’ away from the ’cad- 
emy at Lady-day, an’ I shall let him run loose for a quarter; 
but after that I want to send him to a downright good 
school, where they’ll make a scholard of him.” 

“ Well,” said Mr. Riley, “ there’s no greater advantage 
you can give him than a good education. Not,” he added, 
with polite significance, — “ not that a man can’t be an ex¬ 
cellent miller and farmer, and a shrewd, sensible fellow into 
the bargain, without much help from the schoolmaster.” 

“ I believe you,” said Mr. Tulliver, winking, and turning 
his head on one side; “ but that’s where it is. I don’t mean 
Tom to be a miller and farmer. I see no fun i’ that. Why, 
if I made him a miller an’ farmer, he’d be expectin’ to take 
to the mill an’ the land, an’ a-hinting at me as it was time 
for me to lay by an’ think o’ my latter end. Nay, nay, I’ve 
seen enough o’ that wi’ sons. I’ll never pull my coat off be¬ 
fore I go to bed. I shall give Tom an eddication an’ put him 
to a business, as he may make a nest for himself, an’ not 
want to push me out o’ mine. Pretty well if he gets it when 
I’m dead an’ gone. I sha’n’t be put off wi’ spoon-meat afore 
I’ve lost my teeth.” 

This was evidently a point on which Mr. Tulliver felt 
strongly; and the impetus which had given unusual rapidity 
and emphasis to his speech showed itself still unexhausted 
for some minutes afterward in a defiant motion of the head 
from side to side, and an occasional “ Nay, nay,” like a 
subsiding growl. 

These angry symptoms were keenly observed by Maggie, 
and cut her to the quick. Tom, it appeared, was supposed 
capable of turning his father out of doors, and of making 



BOY AND GIRL 


13 


the future m some way tragic by his wickedness. This was 
not to be borne; and Maggie jumped up from her stool, for¬ 
getting all about her heavy book, which fell with a bang 
within the fender, and going up between her father’s knees, 
said, in a half-crying, half-indignant voice, — 

“ Father, Tom wouldn’t be naughty to you ever; I know 
he wouldn’t.” 

Mrs. Tulliver was out of the room superintending a choice 
supper-dish, and Mr. Tulliver’s heart was touched; so 
Maggie was not scolded about the book. Mr. Riley quietly 
picked it up and looked at it, while the father laughed, with 
a certain tenderness in his hard-lined face, and patted his 
little girl on the back, and then held her hands and kept her 
between his knees. 

“What! they mustn’t say any harm o’ Tom, eh?” said 
Mr. Tulliver, looking at Maggie with a twinkling eye. Then, 
in a lower voice, turning to Mr. Riley, as though Maggie 
couldn’t hear, “ She understands what one’s talking about 
so as never was. And you should hear her read, — straight 
off, as if she knowed it all beforehand. And allays at her 
book! But it’s bad — it’s bad,” Mr. Tulliver added sadly, 
checking this blamable exultation. “ A woman’s no business 
wi’ being so clever; it’ll turn to trouble, I doubt. But bless 
you! ” — here the exultation was clearly recovering the 
mastery, — “ she’ll read the books and understand ’em bet¬ 
ter nor half the folks as are growed up.” 

Maggie’s cheeks began to flush with triumphant excite¬ 
ment. She thought Mr. Riley would have a respect for her 
now; it had been evident that he thought nothing of her 
before. 

Mr. Riley was turning over the leaves of the book, and 
she could make nothing of his face, with its high-arched eye¬ 
brows ; but he presently looked at her, and said, — 

“ Come, come and tell me something about this book; here 
are some pictures, — I want to know what they mean.” 

Maggie, with deepening color, went without hesitation to 
Mr. Riley’s elbow and looked over the book, eagerly seizing 
one corner, and tossing back her mane, while she said, — 


14 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


“ Oh, I’ll tell you what that means. It’s a dreadful pic¬ 
ture, isn’t it? But I can’t help looking at it. That old 
woman in the water’s a witch, — they’ve put her in to find 
out whether she’s a witch or no; and if she swims she’s a 
witch, and if she’s drowned — and killed, you know — she’s 
innocent, and not a witch, but only a poor silly old woman. 
But what good would it do her then, you know, when she 
was drowned? Only, I suppose, she’d go to heaven, and 
God would make it up to her. And this dreadful black¬ 
smith with his arms akimbo, laughing, — oh, isn’t he ugly ? 

— I’ll tell you what he is. He’s the Devil really ” (here 
Maggie’s voice became louder and more emphatic), “ and not 
a right blacksmith; for the Devil takes the shape of wicked 
men, and walks about and sets people doing wicked things, 
and he’s oftener in the shape of a bad man than any other, 
because, you know, if people saw he was the Devil, and he 
roared at ’em, they’d run away, and he couldn’t make ’em 
do what he pleased.” 

Mr. Tulliver had listened to this exposition of Maggie’s 
with petrifying wonder. 

“ Why, what book is it the wench has got hold on? ” he 
burst out at last. 

“ The History of the Devil, by Daniel Defoe, — not quite 
the right book for a little girl,” said Mr. Riley. “ How 
came it among your books, Mr. Tulliver? ” 

Maggie looked hurt and discouraged, while her father 
said, — 

“ Why, it’s one o’ the books I bought at Partridge’s sale. 
They was all bound alike, — it’s a good binding, you see, — 
and I thought they’d be all good books. There’s Jeremy 
Taylor’s Holy Living and Dying among ’em. I read in it 
often of a Sunday ” (Mr. Tulliver felt somehow a familiarity 
with that great writer, because his name was Jeremy); 

“ and there’s a lot more of ’em, — sermons mostly, I think, 

— but they’ve all got the same covers, and I thought 
they were all o’ one sample, as you may say. But it 
seems one mustn’t* judge by th’ outside. This is a puzzlin’ 
world.” 


BOY AND GIRL 


15 


“ Well,” said Mr. Riley, in an admonitory, patronizing 
tone as he patted Maggie on the head, “ I advise you to put 
by the History of the Devil, and read some prettier book. 
Have you no prettier books ? ” 

“ Oh, yes,” said Maggie, reviving a little in the desire to 
vindicate the variety of her reading. “ I know the reading 
in this book isn’t pretty; but I like the pictures, and I make 
stories to the pictures out of my own head, you know. But 
I’ve got Msop’s Fables, and a book about Kangaroos and 
things, and the Pilgrim’s Progress.” 

“ Ah, a beautiful book,” said Mr. Riley; “ you can’t read 
a better.” 

“ Well, but there’s a great deal about the Devil in that,” 
said Maggie, triumphantly, “ and I’ll show you the picture 
of him in his true shape, as he fought with Christian.” 

Maggie ran in an instant to the corner of the room, 
jumped on a chair, and reached down from the small book¬ 
case a shabby old copy of Bunyan, which opened at once> 
without the least trouble of search, at the picture she 
wanted. 

“ Here he is,” she said, running back to Mr. Riley, “ and 
Tom colored him for me with his paints when he was at 
home last holidays, — the body all black, you know, and the 
eyes red, like fire, because he’s all fire inside, and it shines 
out at his eyes.” 

“ Go, go! ” said Mr. Tulliver, peremptorily, beginning to 
feel rather uncomfortable at these free remarks on the per¬ 
sonal appearance of a being powerful enough to create law¬ 
yers; “shut up the book, and let’s hear no more o’ such 
talk. It is as I thought — the child ’ull learn more mischief 
nor good wi’ the books. Go, go and see after your mother.” 

Maggie shut up the book at once, with a sense of disgrace, 
but not being inclined to see after her mother, she compro¬ 
mised the matter by going into a dark corner behind her 
father’s chair, and nursing her doll, toward which she had 
an occasional fit of fondness in Tom’s absence, neglecting its 
toilet, but lavishing so many warm kisses on it that the 
waxen cheeks had a wasted, unhealthy appearance. 


16 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


“ Did you ever hear the like on’t? ” said Mr. Tulliver, as 
Maggie retired. “ It’s a pity but what she’d been the lad, 
— she’d ha’ been a match for the lawyers, she would. IVs 
the wonderful’st thing ” — here he lowered his voice — “ as 
I picked the mother because she wasn’t o’er ’cute — bein’ a 
good-looking woman too, an’ come of a rare family for man¬ 
aging, but I picked her from her sisters o’ purpose, ’cause 
she was a bit weak like; for I wasn’t agoin’ to be told the 
rights o’ things by my own fireside. But you see when a 
man’s got brains himself, there’s no knowing where they’ll 
run to; an’ a pleasant sort o’ soft woman may go on breed¬ 
ing you stupid lads and ’cute wenches, till it’s like as if the 
world was turned topsy-turvy. It’s an uncommon puzzlin’ 
thing.” 

Mr. Riley’s gravity gave way, and he shook a little under 
the application of his pinch of snuff before he said, — 

“ But your lad’s not stupid, is he? I saw him, when I was 
here last, busy making fishing-tackle; he seemed quite up 
to it.” 

“ Well, he isn’t not to say stupid, — he’s got a notion o’ 
things out o’ door, an’ a sort o’ common sense, as he’d lay 
hold o’ things by the right handle. But he’s slow with his 
tongue, you see, and he reads but poorly, and can’t abide 
the books, and spells all wrong, they tell me, an’ as shy as 
can be wi’ strangers, an’ you never hear him say ’cute things 
like the little wench. Now, what I want is to send him to a 
school where they’ll make him a bit nimble with his tongue 
and his pen, and make a smart chap of him. I want my 
son to be even wi’ these fellows as have got the start o’ me 
with having better schooling. Not but what, if the world 
had been left as God made it, I could ha’ seen my way, and 
held my own wi’ the best of ’em; but things have got so 
twisted round and wrapped up i’ unreasonable words, as 
aren’t a bit like ’em, as I’m clean at fault, often an’ often. 
Everything winds about so — the more straightforrard you 
are, the more you’re puzzled.” 

Mr. Tulliver took a draught, swallowed it slowly, and 
shook his head in a melancholy manner, conscious of ex- 


BOY AND GIRL 17 

employing the truth that a perfectly sane intellect is hardly 
at home in this insane world. 

“ You’re quite in the right of it, Tulliver,” observed Mr. 
Riley. “ Better spend an extra hundred or two on your 
son’s education, than leave it him in your will. I know I 
should have tried to do so by a son of mine, if I’d had one, 
though, God knows, I haven’t your ready money to play 
with, Tulliver; and I have a houseful of daughters into the 
bargain.” 

“ I dare say, now, you know of a school as ’ud be just the 
thing for Tom,” said Mr. Tulliver, not diverted from his 
purpose by any sympathy with Mr. Riley’s deficiency of 
ready cash. 

Mr. Riley took a pinch of snuff, and kept Mr. Tulliver in 
suspense by a silence that seemed deliberative, before he 
said, — "I know of a very fine chance for any one that’s 
got the necessary money, and that’s what you have, Tulliver. 
The fact is, I wouldn’t recommend any friend of mine to 
send a boy to a regular school, if he could afford to do bet¬ 
ter. But if any one wanted his boy to get superior instruc¬ 
tion and training, where he would be the companion of his 
master, and that master a first-rate fellow, I know his man. 
I wouldn’t mention the chance to everybody, because I don’t 
think everybody would succeed in getting it, if he were to 
try; but I mention it to you, Tulliver, between ourselves.” 

The fixed inquiring glance with which Mr. Tulliver had 
been watching his friend’s oracular face became quite eager. 

“ Ay, now, let’s hear,” he said, adjusting himself in his 
chair with the complacency of a person who is thought 
worthy of important communications. 

“ He’s an Oxford man,” said Mr. Riley, sententiously, 
shutting his mouth close, and looking at Mr. Tulliver to ob¬ 
serve the effect of this stimulating information. 

“ What! a parson? ” said Mr. Tulliver, rather doubtfully. 

“ Yes, and an M.A. The bishop, I understand, thinks very 
highly of him; why, it was the bishop who got him his pres¬ 
ent curacy.” 

“ Ah ? ” said Mr. Tulliver, to whom one thing was as won- 


18 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


derful as another concerning these unfamiliar phenomena. 
“ But what can he want wi’ Tom, then? ” 

“ Why, the fact is, he’s fond of teaching, and wishes to 
keep up his studies, and a clergyman has but little oppor¬ 
tunity for that in his parochial duties. He’s willing to take 
one or two boys as pupils to fill up his time profitably. The 
boys would be quite of the family, — the finest thing in the 
world for them; under Stelling’s eye continually.” 

“ But do you think they’d give the poor lad twice o’ pud¬ 
ding? ” said Mrs. Tulliver, who was now in her place again. 
“ He’s such a boy for pudding as never was; an’ a growing 
boy like that, — it’s dreadful to think o’ their stintin’ him.” 

“And what money ’ud he want?” said Mr. Tulliver, 
-whose instinct told him that the services of this admirable 
M.A. would bear a high price. 

“ Why, I know of a clergyman who asks a hundred and 
fifty with his youngest pupils, and he’s not to be mentioned 
with Stelling, the man I speak of. I know, on good author¬ 
ity, that one of the chief people at Oxford said, Stelling 
might get the highest honors if he chose. But he didn’t 
care about university honors; he’s a quiet man — not noisy.” 

“Ah, a deal better — a deal better,” said Mr. Tulliver; 
“ but a hundred and fifty’s an uncommon price. I never 
thought o’ paying so much as that.” 

“A good education, let me tell you, Tulliver, — a good 
education is cheap at the money. But Stelling is moderate 
in his terms; he’s not a grasping man. I’ve no doubt he’d 
take your boy at a hundred, and that’s what you wouldn’t 
get many other clergymen to do. I’ll write to him about it, 
if you like.” 

Mr. Tulliver rubbed his knees, and looked at the carpet 
in a meditative manner. 

“ But belike he’s a bachelor,” observed Mrs. Tulliver, in 
the interval; “an’ I’ve no opinion o’ housekeepers. There 
was my brother, as is dead an’ gone, had a housekeeper 
once, an’ she took half the feathers out o’ the best bed, an’ 
packed ’em up an’ sent ’em away. An’ it’s unknown the 
linen she made away with — Stott her name was. It ’ud 


BOY AND GIRL 19 

break my heart to send Tom where there’s a housekeeper, 
an’ I hope you won’t think of it, Mr. Tulliver.” 

“ You may set your mind at rest on that score, Mrs. Tul¬ 
liver,” said Mr. Riley, “ for Stelling is married to as nice a 
little woman as any man need wish for a wife. There isn’t a 
kinder little soul in the world; I know her family well. She 
has very much your complexion, — light curly hair. She 
comes of a good Mudport family, and it’s not every offer 
that would have been acceptable in that quarter. But 
Stelling’s not an every-day man; rather a particular fellow 
as to the people he chooses to be connected with. But I 
think he would have no objection to take your son; I think 
he would not, on my representation.” 

“ I don’t know what he could have against the lad,” said 
Mrs. Tulliver, with a slight touch of motherly indignation; 
“ a nice fresh-skinned lad as anybody need wish to see.” 

“ But there’s one thing I’m thinking on,” said Mr. Tul¬ 
liver, turning his head on one side and looking at Mr. Riley, 
after a long perusal of the carpet. “ Wouldn’t a parson be 
almost too high-learnt to bring up a lad to be a man o’ busi¬ 
ness? My notion o’ the parsons was as they’d got a sort o’ 
learning as lay mostly out o’ sight. And that isn’t what I 
want for Tom. I want him to know figures, and write like 
print, and see into things quick, and know what folks mean, 
and how to wrap things up in words as aren’t actionable. 
It’s an uncommon fine thing, that is,” concluded Mr. Tul¬ 
liver, shaking his head, “ when you can let a man know what 
you think of him without paying for it.” 

“ Oh, my dear Tulliver,” said Mr. Riley, “ you’re quite 
under a mistake about the clergy; all the best schoolmasters 
are of the clergy. The schoolmasters who are not clergymen 
are a very low set of men generally.” 

“Ay, that Jacobs is, at the ’cademy,” interposed Mr. 
Tulliver. 

“ To be sure, — men who have failed in other trades, most 
likely. Now, a clergyman is a gentleman by profession and 
education; and besides that, he has the knowledge that will 
ground a boy, and prepare him for entering on any career 


20 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


with credit. There may be some clergymen who are mere 
book-men; but you may depend upon it, Stelling is not one 
of them, — a man that’s wide awake, let me tell you. Drop 
him a hint, and that’s enough. You talk of figures, now; 
you have only to say to Stelling, ‘ I want my son to be a 
thorough arithmetician,’ and you may leave the rest to 
him.” 

Mr. Riley paused a moment, while Mr. Tulliver, somewhat 
reassured as to clerical tutorship, was inwardly rehearsing 
to an imaginary Mr. Stelling the statement, “ I want my 
son to know ’rethmetic.” 

“ You see, my dear Tulliver,” Mr. Riley continued, “ when 
you get a thoroughly educated man, like Stelling, he’s at no 
loss to take up any branch of instruction. When a work¬ 
man knows the use of his tools, he can make a door as well 
as a window.” 

“ Ay, that’s true,” said Mr. Tulliver, almost convinced 
now that the clergy must be the best of schoolmasters. 

“ Well, I’ll tell you what I’ll do for you,” said Mr. Riley, 
“ and I wouldn’t do it for everybody. I’ll see Stelling’s 
father-in-law, or drop him a line when I get back to Mud- 
port, to say that you wish to place your boy with his son- 
in-law, and I dare say Stelling will write to you, and send 
you his terms.” 

“ But there’s no hurry, is there? ” said Mrs. Tulliver; 
“ for I hope, Mr. Tulliver, you won’t let Tom begin at his 
new school before Midsummer. He began at the ’cademy 
at the Lady-day quarter, and you see what good’s come 
of it.” 

“ Ay, ay, Bessy, never brew wi’ bad malt upo’ MichaelmaS- 
day, else you’ll have a poor tap,” said Mr. Tulliver, winking 
and smiling at Mr. Riley, with the natural pride of a man 
who has a buxom wife conspicuously his inferior in intellect. 
u But it’s true there’s no hurry; you’ve hit it there, Bessy.” 

“ If might be as well not to defer the arrangement too 
long,” said Mr. Riley, quietly, “ for Stelling may have propo¬ 
sitions from other parties, and I know he would not take 
more than two or three boarders, if so many. If I were you, 


BOY AND GIRL 


21 


I think I would enter on the subject with Stelling at once: 
there’s no necessity for sending the boy before Midsummer, 
but I would be on the safe side, and make sure that nobody 
forestalls you.” 

“ Ay, there’s summat in that,” said Mr. Tulliver. 

“ Father,” broke in Maggie, who had stolen unperceived to 
her father’s elbow again, listening with parted lips, while she 
held her doll topsy-turvy, and crushed its nose against the 
wood of the chair, — “ father, is it a long way off where 
Tom is to go? Sha’n’t we ever go to see him? ” 

“ I don’t know, my wench,” said the father, tenderly. 
“ Ask Mr. Riley; he knows.” 

Maggie came round promptly in front of Mr. Riley, and 
said, “ How far is it, please, sir? ” 

“ Oh, a long, long way off,” that gentleman answered, be¬ 
ing of opinion that children, when they are not naughty, 
should always be spoken to jocosely. “You must borrow 
the seven-leagued boots to get to him.” 

“That’s nonsense!” said Maggie, tossing her head 
haughtily, and turning away, with the tears springing in her 
eyes. She began to dislike Mr. Riley; it was evident he 
thought her silly and of no consequence. 

“ Hush, Maggie! for shame of you, asking questions and 
chattering,” said her mother. “ Come and sit down on your 
little stool, and hold your tongue, do. But,” added Mrs. 
Tulliver, who had her own alarm awakened, “ is it so far off 
as I couldn’t wash him and mend him? ” 

“About fifteen miles; that’s all,” said Mr. Riley. “You 
can drive there and back in a day quite comfortably. Or — 
Stelling is a hospitable, pleasant man — he’d be glad to have 
you stay.” 

“ But it’s too far off for the linen, I doubt,” said Mrs. Tul¬ 
liver, sadly. 

The entrance of supper opportunely adjourned this diffi¬ 
culty, and relieved Mr. Riley from the labor of suggesting 
some solution or compromise, — a labor which he would 
otherwise doubtless have undertaken; for, as you perceive, 
he was a man of very obliging manners. And he had really 


22 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


given himself the trouble of recommending Mr. Stelling to 
his friend Tulliver without any positive expectation of a 
solid, definite advantage resulting to himself, notwithstand¬ 
ing the subtle indications to the contrary which might have 
misled a too-sagacious observer. 

Mr. Riley was a man of business, and not cold toward his 
own interest, yet even he was more under the influence of 
small promptings than of far-sighted designs. He had no 
private understanding with the Rev. Walter Stelling; on the 
contrary, he knew very little of that M.A. and his acquire¬ 
ments, — not quite enough, perhaps, to warrant so strong a 
recommendation of him as he had given to his friend Tul¬ 
liver. But he believed Mr. Stelling to be an excellent classic, 
for Gadsby had said so, and Gadsby’s first cousin was an 
Oxford tutor; which was better ground for the belief even 
than his own immediate observation would have been, for 
though Mr. Riley had received a tincture of the classics at 
the great Mudport Free School, and had a sense of under¬ 
standing Latin generally, his comprehension of any particu¬ 
lar Latin was not ready. Doubtless there remained a subtle 
aroma from his juvenile contact with the De Senectute and 
the fourth book of the JEneid, but it had ceased to be dis¬ 
tinctly recognizable as classical, and was only perceived in 
the higher finish and force of his auctioneering style. Then, 
Stelling was an Oxford man, and the Oxford men were al¬ 
ways — no, no, it was the Cambridge men who were always 
good mathematicians. But a man who had had a university 
education could teach anything he liked; especially a man 
like Stelling, who had made a speech at a Mudport dinner 
on a political occasion, and had acquitted himself so well 
that it was generally remarked, this son-in-law of Timpson’s 
was a sharp fellow. It was to be expected of a Mudport 
man, from the parish of St. Ursula, that he would not omit 
to do a good turn to a son-in-law of Timpson’s, for Timpson 
was one of the most useful and influential men in the parish, 
and had a good deal of business, which he knew how to put 
into the right hands. Mr. Riley liked such men, quite apart 
from any money which might be diverted, through their 


BOY AND GIRL 


23 


good judgment, from less worthy pockets into his own; and 
it would be a satisfaction to him to say to Timpson on his 
return home, “ I’ve secured a good pupil for your son-in- 
law.” Timpson had a large family of daughters; Mr. Riley 
felt for him; besides, Louisa Timpson’s face, with its light 
curls, had been a familiar object to him over the pew wain¬ 
scot on a Sunday for nearly fifteen years; it was natural her 
husband should be a commendable tutor. Moreover, Mr. 
Riley knew of no other schoolmaster whom he had any 
ground for recommending in preference; why, then, should 
he not recommend Stelling? His friend Tulliver had asked 
him for an opinion; it is always chilling, in friendly inter¬ 
course, to say you have no opinion to give. And if you de¬ 
liver an opinion at all, it is mere stupidity not to do it with 
an air of conviction and well-founded knowledge. You make 
it your own in uttering it, and naturally get fond of it. Thus 
Mr. Riley, knowing no harm of Stelling to begin with, and 
wishing him well, so far as he had any wishes at all con¬ 
cerning him, had no sooner recommended him than he be¬ 
gan to think with admiration of a man recommended on 
such high authority, and would soon have gathered so warm 
an interest on the subject, that if Mr. Tulliver had in the 
end declined to send Tom to Stelling, Mr. Riley would have 
thought his “ friend of the old school ” a thoroughly pig¬ 
headed fellow. 

If you blame Mr. Riley very severely for giving a recom¬ 
mendation on such slight grounds, I must say you are rather 
hard upon him. Why should an auctioneer and appraiser 
thirty years ago, who had as good as forgotten his free- 
school Latin, be expected to manifest a delicate scrupulosity 
which is not always exhibited by gentlemen of the learned 
professions, even in our present advanced stage of morality ? 

Besides, a man with the milk of human kindness in him 
can scarcely abstain from doing a good-natured action, and 
one cannot be good-natured all round. Nature herself occa¬ 
sionally quarters an inconvenient parasite on an animal 
toward whom she has otherwise no ill will. What then? 
We admire her care for the parasite. If Mr. Riley had 


24 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


shrunk from giving a recommendation that was not based 
on valid evidence, he would not have helped Mr. Stelling 
to a paying pupil, and that would not have been so well for 
the reverend gentleman. Consider, too, that all the pleas¬ 
ant little dim ideas and complacencies — of standing well 
with Timpson, of dispensing advice when he was asked for 
it, of impressing his friend Tulliver with additional respect, 
of saying something, and saying it emphatically, with other 
inappreciably minute ingredients that went along with the 
warm hearth and the brandy-and-water to make. up Mr. 
Riley’s consciousness on this occasion — would have been a 
mere blank. 


CHAPTER IV 

TOM IS EXPECTED 

I T WAS a heavy disappointment to Maggie that she was 
not allowed to go with her father in the gig when he went 
to fetch Tom home from the academy; but the morning was 
too wet, Mrs. Tulliver said, for a little girl to go out in her 
best bonnet. Maggie took the opposite view very strongly, 
and it was a direct consequence of this difference of opinion 
that when her mother was in the act of brushing out the re¬ 
luctant black crop Maggie suddenly rushed from under her 
hands and dipped her head in a basin of water standing 
near, in the vindictive determination that there should be no 
more chance of curls that day. 

“ Maggie, Maggie! ” exclaimed Mrs. Tulliver, sitting stout 
and helpless with the brushes on her lap, “ what is to become 
of you if you’re so naughty? I’ll tell your aunt Glegg and 
your aunt Pullet when they come next week, and they’ll 
never love you any more. Oh dear, oh dear! look at your 
clean pinafore, wet from top to bottom. Folks ’ull think it’s 
a judgment on me as I’ve got such a child, — they’ll think 
I’ve done summat wicked.” 

Before this remonstrance was finished, Maggie was already 


BOY AND GIRL 


25 


out of hearing, making her way toward the great attic that 
run under the old high-pitched roof, shaking the water from 
her black locks as she ran, like a Skye terrier escaped from 
his bath. This attic was Maggie’s favorite retreat on a wet 
day, when the weather was not too cold; here she fretted out 
all her ill humors, and talked aloud to the worm-eaten floors 
and the worm-eaten shelves, and the dark rafters festooned 
with cobwebs; and here she kept a Fetish which she punished 
for all her misfortunes. This was the trunk of a large wooden 
doll, which once stared with the roundest of eyes above the 
reddest of cheeks; but was now entirely defaced by a long 
career of vicarious suffering. Three nails driven into the 
head commemorated as many crises in Maggie’s nine years 
of earthly struggle; that luxury of vengeance having been 
suggested to her by the picture of Jael destroying Sisera in 
the old Bible. The last nail had been driven in with a fiercer 
stroke than usual, for the Fetish on that occasion repre¬ 
sented aunt Glegg. But immediately afterward Maggie had 
reflected that if she drove many nails in she would not be 
so well able to fancy that the head was hurt when she 
knocked it against the wall, nor to comfort it, and make be¬ 
lieve to poultice it, when her fury was abated; for even 
aunt Glegg would be pitiable when she had been hurt very 
much, and thoroughly humiliated, so as to beg her niece’s 
pardon. Since then she had driven no more nails in, but 
had soothed herself by alternately grinding and beating the 
wooden head against the rough brick of the great chimneys 
that made two square pillars supporting the roof. That was 
what she did this morning on reaching the attic, sobbing all 
the while with a passion that expelled every other form of 
consciousness, — even the memory of the grievance that 
had caused it. As at last the sobs were getting quieter, and 
the grinding less fierce, a sudden beam of sunshine, falling 
through the wire lattice across the worm-eaten shelves, 
made her throw away the Fetish and run to the window. 
The sun was really breaking out; the sound of the mill 
seemed cheerful again; the granary doors were open; and 
there was Yap, the queer white-and-brown terrier, with one 


26 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


ear turned back, trotting about and sniffing vaguely, as if 
he were in search of a companion. It was irresistible. 
Maggie tossed her hair back and ran downstairs, seized her 
bonnet without putting it on, peeped, and then dashed along 
the passage lest she should encounter her mother, and was 
quickly out in the yard, whirling round like a Pythoness, 
and singing as she whirled, “ Yap, Yap, Tom's coming 
home! ” while Yap danced and barked round her, as much 
as to say, if there was any noise wanted he was the dog 
for it. 

“ Hegb, hegh, Miss! you’ll make yourself giddy, an’ 
tumble down i’ the dirt,” said Luke, the head miller, a tall, 
broad-shouldered man of forty, black-eyed and black-haired, 
subdued by a general mealiness, like an auricula. 

Maggie paused in her whirling and said, staggering a little, 
“ Oh no, it doesn’t make me giddy, Luke; may I go into the 
mill with you? ” 

Maggie loved to linger in the great spaces of the mill, and 
often came out with her black hair powdered to a soft white¬ 
ness that made her dark eyes flash out with new fire. The 
resolute din, the unresting motion of the great stones, giv¬ 
ing her a dim, delicious awe as at the presence of an uncon¬ 
trollable force; the meal forever pouring, pouring; the fine 
white powder softening all surfaces, and making the very 
spider-nets look like a faery lace-work; the sweet, pure scent 
of the meal, — all helped to make Maggie feel that the mill 
was a little world apart from her outside every-day life. The 
spiders were especially a subject of speculation with her. 
She wondered if they had any relatives outside the mill, for 
in that case there must be a painful difficulty in their family 
intercourse, — a fat and floury spider, accustomed to take 
his fly well dusted with meal, must suffer a little at a cousin’s 
table where the fly was au naturel, and the lady spiders 
must be mutually shocked at each other’s appearance. But 
the part of the mill she liked best was the topmost story, — 
the corn-hutch, where there were the great heaps of grain, 
which she could sit on and slide down continually. She was 
in the habit of taking this recreation as she conversed with 


BOY AND GIRL 27 

Luke, to whom she was very communicative, wishing him to 
think well of her understanding, as her father did. 

Perhaps she felt it necessary to recover her position with 
him on the present occasion, for, as she sat sliding on the 
heap of grain near which he was busying himself, she said, 
at that shrill pitch which was requisite in mill-society, — 

“ I think you never read any book but the Bible, did you, 
Luke? ” 

“ Nay, Miss, an’ not much o’ that,” said Luke, with great 
frankness. “ I’m no reader, I aren’t.” 

“ But if I lent you one of my books, Luke? I’ve not got 
any very pretty books that would be easy for you to read; 
but there’s Pug’s Tour of Europe, — that would tell you all 
about the different sorts of people in the world, and if you 
didn’t understand the reading, the pictures would help you; 
they show the looks and ways of the people, and what they 
do. There are the Dutchmen, very fat, and smoking, you 
know, and one sitting on a barrel.” 

“ Nay, Miss, I’n no opinion o’ Dutchmen. There ben’t 
much good i’ knowin’ about them.” 

“ But they’re our fellow-creatures, Luke; we ought to 
know about our fellow-creatures.” m 

“ Not much o’ fellow-creaturs, I think, Miss; all I know 
— my old master, as war a knowin’ man, used to say, says 
he, ‘ If e’er I sow my wheat wi’out brinin’, I’m a Dutchman,’ 
says he; an’ that war as much as to say as a Dutchman war 
a fool, or next door. Nay, nay, I aren’t goin’ to bother my- 
sen about Dutchmen. There’s fools enoo, an’ rogues enoo, 
wi’out lookin’ i’ books for ’em.” 

“ Oh, well,” said Maggie, rather foiled by Luke’s unex¬ 
pectedly decided views about Dutchmen, “ perhaps you 
would like Animated Nature better; that’s not Dutchmen, 
you know, but elephants and kangaroos, and the civet-cat, 
and the sunfish, and a bird sitting on its tail, — I forget its 
name. There are countries full of those creatures, instead 
of horses and cows, you know. Shouldn’t you like to know 
about them, Luke ? ” 

“ Nay, Miss, I’n got to keep count o’ the flour an’ corn; 


28 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


I can’t do wi’ knowin’ so many things besides my work. 
That’s what brings folks to the gallows, — knowin’ every¬ 
thing but what they’n got to get their bread by. An’ they’re 
mostly lies, I think, what’s printed i’ the books: them printed 
sheets are, anyhow, as the men cry i’ the streets.” 

“ Why, you’re like my brother Tom, Luke,” said Maggie, 
wishing to turn the conversation agreeably; “Tom’s not 
fond of reading. I love Tom so dearly, Luke, — better than 
anybody else in the world. When he grows up I shall keep 
his house, and we shall always live together. I can tell him 
everything he doesn’t know. But I think Tom’s clever, for 
all he doesn’t like books; he makes beautiful whipcord and 
rabbit-pens.” 

“ Ah,” said Luke, “ but he’ll be fine an’ vexed, as the rab¬ 
bits are all dead.” 

“Dead! ” screamed Maggie, jumping up from her sliding 
seat on the corn. “ Oh, dear, Luke! What! the lop-eared 
one, and the spotted doe that Tom spent all his money to 
buy ? ” 

“ As dead as moles,” said Luke, fetching his comparison 
from the unmistakable corpses nailed to the stable wall. 

“ Oh, dear, Luke,” said Maggie, in a piteous tone, while 
the big tears rolled down her cheek; “ Tom told me to take 
care of ’em, and I forgot. What shall I do ? ” 

“ Well, you see, Miss, they were in that far tool-house, an’ 
it was nobody’s business to see to ’em. I reckon Master 
Tom told Harry to feed ’em, but there’s no countin’ on 
Harry; he’s an offal creatur as iver come about the primises, 
he is. He remembers nothing but his own inside — an’ I 
wish it ’ud gripe him.” 

“ Oh, Luke, Tom told me to be sure and remember the 
rabbits every day; but how could I, when they didn’t come 
into my head, you know ? Oh, he will be so angry with me, 
I know he will, and so sorry about his rabbits, and so am I 
sorry. Oh, what shall I do ? ” 

“ Don’t you fret, Miss,” said Luke, soothingly; “ they’re 
nash things, them lop-eared rabbits; they’d happen ha’ 
died, if they’d been fed. Things out o’ natur niver thrive: 


BOY AND GIRL 


29 


God A'mighty doesn't like 'em. He made the rabbits' ears 
to lie back, an' it's nothin' but contrairiness to make 'em 
hing down like a mastiff dog's. Master Tom 'ull know bet¬ 
ter nor buy such things another time. Don't you fret, Miss. 
Will you come along home wi’ me, and see my wife? I’m 
a-goin’ this minute.” 

The invitation offered an agreeable distraction to Maggie's 
grief, and her tears gradually subsided as she trotted along 
by Luke's side to his pleasant cottage, which stood with its 
apple and pear trees, and with the added dignity of a lean-to 
pig-sty, at the other end of the Mill fields. Mrs. Moggs, 
Luke’s wife, was a decidedly agreeable acquaintance. She 
exhibited her hospitality in bread and treacle, and possessed 
various works of art. Maggie actually forgot that she had 
any special cause of sadness this morning, as she stood on a 
chair to look at a remarkable series of pictures representing 
the Prodigal Son in the costume of Sir Charles Grandison, 
except that, as might have been expected from his defective 
moral character, he had not, like that accomplished hero, the 
taste and strength of mind to dispense with a wig. But the 
indefinable weight the dead rabbits had left on her mind 
caused her to feel more than usual pity for the career of 
this weak young man, particularly when she looked at the 
picture where he leaned against a tree with a flaccid appear¬ 
ance, his knee-breeches unbuttoned and his wig awry, while 
the swine, apparently of some foreign breed, seemed to in¬ 
sult him by their good spirits over their feast of husks. 

“ I’m very glad his father took him back again, aren’t 
you, Luke? ” she said. “ For he was very sorry, you know, 
and wouldn’t do wrong again.” 

“ Eh, Miss,” said Luke, “ he’d be no great shakes, I doubt, 
let’s feyther do what he would for him.” 

That was a painful thought to Maggie, and she wished 
much that the subsequent history of the young man had not 
been left a blank. 



CHAPTER V 

TOM COMES HOME 

T OM was to arrive early in the afternoon, and there was 
another fluttering heart besides Maggie’s when it was 
late enough for the sound of the gig-wheels to be expected; 
^for if Mrs. Tulliver had a strong feeling, it was fondness for 
her boy. At last the sound came, — that quick light bowl¬ 
ing of the gig-wheels, — and in spite of the wind, which was 
blowing the clouds about, and was not likely to respect Mrs. 
Tulliver’s curls and cap-strings, she came outside the door, 
and even held her hand on Maggie’s offending head, for¬ 
getting all the griefs of the morning. 

“ There he is, my sweet lad! But, Lord ha’ mercy! he’s 
got never a collar on; it’s been lost on the road, I’ll be bound, 
and spoilt the set.” 

Mrs. Tulliver stood with her arms open; Maggie jumped 
first on one leg and then on the other; while Tom descended 
from the gig, and said, with masculine reticence as to the 
tender emotions, “ Hallo! Yap — what! are you there? ” 

30 



BOY AND GIRL 


31 


Nevertheless he submitted to be kissed willingly enough, 
though Maggie hung on his neck in rather a strangling fash¬ 
ion, while his blue-gray eyes wandered toward the croft and 
the lambs and the river, where he promised himself that he 
would begin to fish the first thing to-morrow morning. He 
was one of those lads that grow everywhere in England, and 
at twelve or thirteen years of age look as much alike as gos¬ 
lings,— a lad with light-brown hair, cheeks of cream and 
roses, full lips, indeterminate nose and eyebrows, — a physi¬ 
ognomy in which it seems impossible to discern anything 
but the generic character of boyhood; as different as pos¬ 
sible from poor Maggie's phiz, which Nature seemed to have 
moulded and colored with the most decided intention. But 
that same Nature has the deep cunning which hides itself 
under the appearance of openness, so that simple people 
think they can see through her quite well, and all the while 
she is secretly preparing a refutation of their confident 
prophecies. Under these average boyish physiognomies 
that she seems to turn off by the gross, she conceals some 
of her most rigid, inflexible purposes, some of her most un- 
modifiable characters; and the dark-eyed, demonstrative, re¬ 
bellious girl may after all turn out to be a passive being 
compared with this pink-and-white bit of masculinity with 
the indeterminate features. 

“ Maggie," said Tom, confidentially, taking her into a 
corner, as soon as his mother was gone out to examine his 
box, and the warm parlor had taken off the chill he had 
felt from the long drive, “ you don’t know what I’ve got in 
my pockets,’’ nodding his head up and down as a means of 
rousing her sense of mystery. 

“ No,’’ said Maggie. “How stodgy they look, Tom! Is 
it marls (marbles) or cobnuts?’’ Maggie’s heart sank a 
little, because Tom always said it was “ no good ’’ playing 
with her at those games, she played so badly. 

“Marls! no; I’ve swopped all my marls with the little 
fellows, and cobnuts are no fun, you silly, only when the 
nuts are green. But see here! ’’ He drew something half 
out of his right-hand pocket. 


32 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


“ What is it ? ” said Maggie, in a whisper. “ I can see 
nothing but a bit of yellow.” 

“ Why, it’s — a — new — guess, Maggie! ” 

“ Oh, I can’t guess, Tom,” said Maggie, impatiently. 

“ Don’t be a spitfire, else I won’t tell you,” said Tom, 
thrusting his hand back into his pocket and looking deter¬ 
mined. 

“ No, Tom,” said Maggie, imploringly, laying hold of the 
arm that was held stiffly in the pocket. “ I’m not cross, 
Tom, it was only because I can’t bear guessing. Please be 
good to me.” 

Tom’s arm slowly relaxed, and he said, “ Well, then, it’s a 
new fish-line — two new uns, — one for you, Maggie, all to 
yourself. I wouldn’t go halves in the toffee and gingerbread 
on purpose to save the money; and Gibson and Spouncer 
fought with me because I wouldn’t. And here’s hooks; see 
here — I say, won’t we go and fish to-morrow down by the 
Round Pool? And you shall catch your own fish, Maggie, 
and put the worms on, and everything; won’t it be 
fun? ” 

Maggie’s answer was to throw her arms round Tom’s neck 
and hug him, and hold her cheek against his without speak¬ 
ing, while he slowly unwound some of the line, saying, after 
a pause, — 

“ Wasn’t I a good brother, now, to buy you a line all to 
yourself? You know, I needn’t have bought it, if I hadn’t 
liked.” 

“Yes, very, very good — I do love you, Tom.” 

Tom had put the line back in his pocket, and was looking 
at the hooks one by one, before he spoke again. 

“ And the fellows fought me, because I wouldn’t give in 
about the toffee.” 

“ Oh, dear! I wish they wouldn’t fight at your school, 
Tom. Didn’t it hurt you ? ” 

“ Hurt me? no,” said Tom, putting up the hooks again, 
taking out a large pocket-knife, and slowly opening the 
largest blade, which he looked at meditatively as he rubbed 
his finger along it. Then he added, — 


BOY AND GIRL 


33 


“ I gave Spouncer a black eye, I know; that’s what he got 
by wanting to leather me; I wasn’t going to go halves be¬ 
cause anybody leathered me.” 

“ Oh, how brave you are, Tom! I think you’re like Sam¬ 
son. If there came a lion roaring at me, I think you’d fight 
him, wouldn’t you, Tom ? ” 

“ How can a lion come roaring at you, you silly thing ? 
There’s no lions, only in the shows.” 

“No; but if we were in the lion countries — I mean in 
Africa, where it’s very hot; the lions eat people there. I 
can show it you in the book where I read it.” 

“ Well, I should get a gun and shoot him.” 

“ But if you hadn’t got a gun, — we might have gone out, 
you know, not thinking, just as we go fishing; and then a 
great lion might run toward us roaring, and we couldn’t get 
away from him. What should you do, Tom? ” 

Tom paused, and at last turned away contemptuously, 
saying, " But the lion isn’t coming. What’s the use of 
talking? ” 

“ But I like to fancy how it would be,” said Maggie, fol¬ 
lowing him. “ Just think what you would do, Tom.” 

“ Oh, don’t bother, Maggie! you’re such a silly. I shall 
go and see my rabbits.” 

Maggie’s heart began to flutter with fear. She dared not 
tell the sad truth at once, but she walked after Tom in trem¬ 
bling silence as he went out, thinking how she could tell him 
the news so as to soften at once his sorrow and his anger; 
for Maggie dreaded Tom’s anger of all things; it was quite 
a different anger from her own. 

“ Tom,” she said, timidly, when they were out of doors, 
“ how much money did you give for your rabbits ? ” 

“ Two half-crowns and a sixpence,” said Tom, promptly. 

“ I think I’ve got a great deal more than that in my steel 
purse upstairs. I’ll ask mother to give it you.” 

“ What for? ” said Tom. “ I don’t want your money, you 
silly thing. I’ve got a great deal more money than you, be¬ 
cause I’m a boy. I always have half-sovereigns and sover¬ 
eigns for my Christmas boxes because I shall be a man, and 


34 MILL ON THE FLOSS 

you only have five-shilling pieces, because you’re only a 
girl.” 

“ Well, but, Tom — if mother would let me give you two 
half-crowns and a sixpence out of my purse to put into your 
pocket and spend, you know, and buy some more rabbits 
with it ? ” 

“ More rabbits? I don’t want any more.” 

“ Oh, but, Tom, they’re all dead.” 

Tom stopped immediately in his walk and turned round 
toward Maggie. “ You forgot to feed ’em, then, and Harry 
forgot ? ” he said, his color heightening for a moment, but 
soon subsiding. “ I’ll pitch into Harry. I’ll have him turned 
away. And I don’t love you, Maggie. You sha’n’t go fish¬ 
ing with me to-morrow. I told you to go and see the rabbits 
every day.” He walked on again. 

“ Yes, but I forgot — and I couldn’t help it, indeed, Tom. 
I’m so very sorry,” said Maggie, while the tears rushed fast. 

“ You’re a naughty girl,” said Tom, severely, “and I’m 
sorry I bought you the fish-line. I don’t love you.” 

“ Oh, Tom, it’s very cruel,” sobbed Maggie. “ I’d forgive 
you, if you forgot anything — I wouldn’t mind what you 
did — I’d forgive you and love you.” 

“ Yes, you’re a silly; but I never do forget things, I don’t.” 

“ Oh, please forgive me, Tom; my heart will break,” said 
Maggie, shaking with sobs, clinging to Tom’s arm, and lay¬ 
ing her wet cheek on his shoulder. 

Tom shook her off, and stopped again, saying in a per¬ 
emptory tone, “ Now, Maggie, you just listen. Aren’t I a 
good brother to you? ” 

“ Ye-ye-es,” sobbed Maggie, her chin rising and falling 
convulsedly. 

" Didn’t I think about your fish-line all this quarter, and 
mean to buy it, and saved my money o’ purpose, and 
wouldn’t go halves in the toffee, and Spouncer fought me 
because I wouldn’t ? ” 

“ Ye-ye-es — and I — lo-lo-love you so, Tom.” 

“ But you’re a naughty girl. Last holidays you licked the 
paint off my lozenge-box, and the holidays before that you 


BOY AND GIRL 


35 


let the boat drag my fish-line down when I’d set you to 
watch it, and you pushed your head through my kite, all for 
nothing.” 

“ But I didn’t mean,” said Maggie; “ I couldn’t help it.” 

“ Yes, you could,” said Tom, “ if you’d minded what you 
were doing. And you’re a naughty girl, and you sha’n’t go 
fishing with me to-morrow.” 

With this terrible conclusion, Tom ran away from Maggie 
toward the mill, meaning to greet Luke there, and complain 
to him of Harry. 

Maggie stood motionless, except from her sobs, for a min¬ 
ute or two; then she turned round and ran into the house, 
and up to her attic, where she sat on the floor and laid her 
head against the worm-eaten shelf, with a crushing sense of 
misery. Tom was come home, and she had thought how 
happy she should be; and now he was cruel to her. What 
use was anything if Tom didn’t love her? Oh, he was very 
cruel! Hadn’t she wanted to give him the money, and said 
how very sorry she was ? She knew she was naughty to her 
mother, but she had never been naughty to Tom — had 
never meant to be naughty to him. 

“ Oh, he is cruel! ” Maggie sobbed aloud, finding a 
wretched pleasure in the hollow resonance that came through 
the long empty space of the attic. She never thought of 
beating or grinding her Fetish; she was too miserable to be 
angry. 

These bitter sorrows of childhood! when sorrow is all new 
and strange, when hope has not yet got wings to fly beyond 
the days and weeks, and the space from summer to summer 
seems measureless. 

Maggie soon thought she had been hours in the attic, and 
it must be tea-time, and they were all having their tea, and 
not thinking of her. Well, then, she would stay up there 
and starve herself, — hide herself behind the tub, and stay 
there all night, — and then they would all be frightened, and 
Tom would be sorry. Thus Maggie thought in the pride of 
her heart, as she crept behind the tub; but presently she 
began to cry again at the idea that they didn’t mind her be- 


36 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


ing there. If she went down again to Tom now — would he 
forgive her? Perhaps her father would be there, and he 
would take her part. But then she wanted Tom to forgive 
her because he loved her, not because his father told him. 
No, she would never go down if Tom didn’t come to fetch 
her. The resolution lasted in great intensity for five dark 
minutes behind the tub; but then the need of being loved — 
the strongest need in poor Maggie’s nature — began to 
wrestle with her pride, and soon threw it. She crept from 
behind her tub into the twilight of the long attic, but just 
then she heard a quick footstep on the stairs. 

Tom had been too much interested in his talk with Luke, 
in going the round of the premises, walking in and out where 
he pleased, and whittling sticks without any particular rea¬ 
son, — except that he didn’t whittle sticks at school, — to 
think of Maggie and the effect his anger had produced on 
her. He meant to punish her, and that business having been 
performed, he occupied himself with other matters, like a 
practical person. But when he had been called in to tea, his 
father said, “Why, where’s the little wench?” and Mrs. 
Tulliver, almost at the same moment, said, “ Where’s your 
little sister ? ” — both of them having supposed that Maggie 
and Tom had been together all the afternoon. 

“ I don’t know,” said Tom. He didn’t want to “ tell ” of 
Maggie, though he was angry with her; for Tom Tulliver 
was a lad of honor. 

“ What! hasn’t she been playing with you all this while ? ” 
said the father. “ She’d been thinking o’ nothing but your 
coming home.” 

“ I haven’t seen her this two hours,” says Tom, commenc¬ 
ing on the plumcake. 

“Goodness heart! she’s got drownded! ” exclaimed Mrs. 
Tulliver, rising from her seat and running to the window. 
“ How could you let her do so ? ” she added, as became a 
fearful woman, accusing she didn’t know whom of she didn’t 
know what. 

“ Nay, nay, she’s none drownded,” said Mr. Tulliver. 
“You’ve been naughty to her, I doubt, Tom? ” 


BOY AND GIRL 37 

“ I’m sure I haven’t, father,” said Tom, indignantly. “ I 
think she’s in the house.” 

“ Perhaps up in that attic,” said Mrs. Tulliver, “ a-singing 
and talking to herself, and forgetting all about meal-times.” 

“ You go and fetch her down, Tom,” said Mr. Tulliver, 
rather sharply, — his perspicacity or his fatherly fondness 
for Maggie making him suspect that the lad had been hard 
upon “ the little un,” else she would never have left his side. 
“ And be good to her, do you hear? Else I’ll let you know 
better.” 

Tom never disobeyed his father, for Mr. Tulliver was a 
peremptory man, and, as he said, would never let anybody 
get hold of his whip-hand; but he went out rather sullenly, 
carrying his piece of plumcake, and not intending to reprieve 
Maggie’s punishment, which was no more than she deserved. 
Tom was only thirteen, and had no decided views in gram¬ 
mar and arithmetic, regarding them for the most part as 
open questions, but he was particularly clear and positive on 
one point, — namely, that he would punish everybody who 
deserved it. Why, he wouldn’t have minded being punished 
himself if he deserved it; but, then, he never did deserve it. 

It was Tom’s step, then, that Maggie heard on the stairs, 
when her need of love had triumphed over her pride, and 
she was going down with her swollen eyes and dishevelled 
hair to beg for pity. At least her father would stroke her 
head and say, “ Never mind, my wench.” It is a wonderful 
subduer, this need of love, — this hunger of the heart, — as 
peremptory as that other hunger by which Nature forces us 
to submit to the yoke, and change the face of the world. 

But she knew Tom’s step, and her heart began to beat 
violently with the sudden shock of hope. He only stood 
still at the top of the stairs and said, “ Maggie, you’re to 
come down.” But she rushed to him and clung round his 
neck, sobbing, “ Oh, Tom, please forgive me — I can’t bear 
it — I will always be good — always remember things — do 
love me — please, dear Tom! ” 

We learn to restrain ourselves as we get older. We keep 
apart when we have quarrelled, express ourselves in well- 


38 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


bred phrases, and in this way preserve a dignified alienation, 
showing much firmness on one side, and swallowing much 
grief on the other. We no longer approximate in our be¬ 
havior to the mere impulsiveness of the lower animals, but 
conduct ourselves in every respect like members of a highly 
civilized society. Maggie and Tom were still very much like 
young animals, and so she could rub her cheek against his, 
and kiss his ear in a random sobbing way; and there were 
tender fibres in the lad that had been used to answer to 
Maggie’s fondling, so that he behaved with a weakness quite 
inconsistent with his resolution to punish her as much as 
she deserved. He actually began to kiss her in return, and 
say, — 

“ Don’t cry, then, Magsie; here, eat a bit o’ cake.” 

Maggie’s sobs began to subside, and she put out her mouth 
for the cake and bit a piece; and then Tom bit a piece, just 
for company, and they ate together and rubbed each other’s 
cheeks and brows and noses together, while they ate, with a 
humiliating resemblance to two friendly ponies. 

“ Come along, Magsie, and have tea,” said Tom at last, 
when there was no more cake except what was downstairs. 

So ended the sorrows of this day, and the next morning 
Maggie was trotting with her own fishing-rod in one hand 
and a handle of the basket in the other, stepping always, by 
a peculiar gift, in the muddiest places, and looking darkly 
radiant from under her beaver-bonnet because Tom was 
good to her. She had told Tom, however, that she should 
like him to put the worms on the hook for her, although 
she accepted his word when he assured her that worms 
couldn’t feel (it was Tom’s private opinion that it didn’t 
much matter if they did). He knew all about worms, and 
fish, and those things; and what birds were mischievous, 
and how padlocks opened, and which way the handles of the 
gates were to be lifted. Maggie thought this sort of knowl¬ 
edge was very wonderful, — much more difficult than re¬ 
membering what was in the books; and she was rather in 
awe of Tom’s superiority, for he was the only person who 
called her knowledge “ stuff,” and did not feel surprised at 


BOY AND GIRL 


39 


her cleverness. Tom, indeed, was of opinion that Maggie 
was a silly little thing; all girls were silly, — they couldn't 
throw a stone so as to hit anything, couldn’t do anything 
with a pocket-knife, and were frightened at frogs. Still, 
he. was very fond of his sister, and meant always to take 
care of her, make her his housekeeper, and punish her when 
she did wrong. 

They were on their way to the Round Pool, — that won¬ 
derful pool, which the floods had made a long while ago. 
No one knew how deep it was; and it was mysterious, too, 
that it should be almost a perfect round, framed in with 
willows and tall reeds, so that the water was only to be seen 
when you got close to the brink. The sight of the old 
favorite spot always heightened Tom’s good humor, and he 
spoke to Maggie in the most amicable whispers, as he opened 
the precious basket and prepared their tackle. He threw 
her line for her, and put the rod into her hand. Maggie 
thought it probable that the small fish would come to her 
hook, and the large ones to Tom’s. But she had forgotten 
all about the fish, and was looking dreamily at the glassy 
water, when Tom said, in a loud whisper, “ Look, look, 
Maggie! ” and came running to prevent her from snatching 
her line away. 

Maggie was frightened lest she had been doing something 
wrong, as usual, but presently Tom drew out her line and 
brought a large tench bouncing on the grass. 

Tom was excited. 

“ 0 Magsie, you little duck! Empty the basket.” 

Maggie was not conscious of unusual merit, but it was 
enough that Tom called her Magsie, and was pleased with 
her. There was nothing to mar her delight in the whispers 
and the dreamy silences, when she listened to the light 
dipping sounds of the rising fish, and the gentle rustling, as 
if the willows and the reeds and the water had their happy 
whisperings also. Maggie thought it would make a very nice 
heaven to sit by the pool in that way, and never be scolded. 
She never knew she had a bite till Tom told her; but she 
liked fishing very much. 


40 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


It was one of their happy mornings. They trotted along 
and sat down together, with no thought that life would 
ever change much for them: they would only get bigger 
and not go to school, and it would always be like the holi¬ 
days; they would always live together and be fond of each 
other. And the mill with its booming; the great chestnut- 
tree under which they played at houses; their own little 
river, the Ripple, where the banks seemed like home, and 
Tom was always seeing the water-rats, while Maggie 
gathered the purple plumy tops of the reeds, which she 
forgot and dropped afterward; above all, the great Floss, 
along which they wandered with a sense of travel, to see the 
rushing spring-tide, the awful Eagre, come up like a hungry 
monster, or to see the Great Ash which had once wailed 
and groaned like a man, these things would always be just 
the same to them. Tom thought people were at a disad¬ 
vantage who lived on any other spot of the globe; and 
Maggie, when she read about Christiana passing “ the river 
over which there is no bridge,” always saw the Floss between 
the green pastures by the Great Ash. 

Life did change for Tom and Maggie; and yet they were 
not wrong in believing that the thoughts and loves of these 
first years would always make part of their lives. We could 
never have loved the earth so well if we had had no child¬ 
hood in it, — if it were not the earth where the same flowers 
come up again every spring that we used to gather with 
our tiny fingers as we sat lisping to ourselves on the grass; 
the same hips and haws on the autumn hedgerows; the same 
redbreasts that we used to call “ God’s birds,” because 
they did no harm to the precious crops. What novelty is 
worth that sweet monotony where everything is known, and 
loved because it is known? 

The wood I walk in on this mild May day, with the young 
yellow-brown foliage of the oaks between me and the blue 
sky, the white star-flowers and the blue-eyed speedwell and 
the ground ivy at my feet, what grove of tropic palms, what 
strange ferns or splendid broad-petalled blossoms, could ever 
thrill such deep and delicate fibres within me as this home 


BOY AND GIRL 


41 


scene ? These familiar flowers, these well-remembered bird- 
notes, this sky, with its fitful brightness, these furrowed 
and grassy fields, each with a sort of personality given to 
it by the capricious hedgerows, — such things as these are 
the mother-tongue of our imagination, the language that is 
laden with all the subtle, inextricable associations the fleet¬ 
ing hours of our childhood left behind them. Our delight 
in the sunshine on the deep-bladed grass to-day might be 
no more than the faint perception of wearied souls, if it 
were not for the sunshine and the grass in the far-off years 
which still live in us, and transform our perception into love. 


CHAPTER VI 

THE AUNTS AND UNCLES ARE COMING 

I T WAS Easter week, and Mrs. Tulliver’s cheesecakes were 
more exquisitely light than usual. “ A puff o’ wind ’ud 
make ’em blow about like feathers,” Kezia the housemaid 
said, feeling proud to live under a mistress who could make 
such pastry; so that no season or circumstances could have 
been more propitious for a family party, even if it had 
not been advisable to consult sister Glegg and sister Pullet 
about Tom’s going to school. 

“ I’d as lief not invite sister Deane this time,” said Mrs. 
Tulliver, “ for she’s as jealous and having as can be, and’s 
allays trying to make the worst o’ my poor children to their 
aunts and uncles.” 

“ Yes, yes,” said Mr. Tulliver, “ ask her to come. I 
never hardly get a bit o’ talk with Deane now; we haven’t 
had him this six months. What’s it matter what she says? 
My children need be beholding to nobody.” 

“ That’s what you allays say, Mr. Tulliver; but I’m sure 
there’s nobody o’ your side, neither aunt nor uncle, to leave 
’em so much as a five-pound note for a leggicy. And there’s 
sister Glegg, and sister Pullet too, saving money unknown, 
for they put by all their own interest and butter-money too; 


42 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


their husbands buy ’em everything.” Mrs. Tulliver was a 
mild woman, but even a sheep will face about a little when 
she has lambs. 

“ Tchuh! ” said Mr. Tulliver. “ It takes a big loaf when 
there’s many to breakfast. What signifies your sisters’ bits 
o’ money when they’ve got halDa-dozen nevvies and nieces 
to divide it among? And your sister Deane won’t get ’em 
to leave all to one, I reckon, and make the country cry 
shame on ’em when they are dead? ” 

“ I don’t know what she won’t get ’em to do,” said Mrs. 
Tulliver, “ for my children are so awk’ard wi’ their aunts and 
uncles. Maggie’s ten times naughtier when they come than 
she is other days, and Tom doesn’t like ’em, bless him! — 
though it’s more nat’ral in a boy than a gell. And there’s 
Lucy Deane’s such a good child, — you may set her on a 
stool, and there she’ll sit for an hour together, and never 
offer to get off. I can’t help loving the child as if she was 
my own; and I’m sure she’s more like my child than sister 
Deane’s, for she’d allays a very poor color for one of our 
family, sister Deane had.” 

“ Well, well, if you’re fond o’ the child, ask her father and 
mother to bring her with ’em. And won’t you ask their 
aunt and uncle Moss too, and some o’ their children? ” 

“ Oh, dear, Mr. Tulliver, why there’d be eight people 
besides the children, and I must put two more leaves i’ the 
table, besides reaching down more o’ the dinner-service; 
and you know as well as I do as my sisters and your sister 
don’t suit well together.” 

“ Well, well, do as you like, Bessy,” said Mr. Tulliver, 
taking up his hat and walking out to the mill. Few wives 
were more submissive than Mrs. Tulliver on all points un¬ 
connected with her family relations; but she had been a 
Miss Dodson, and the Dodsons were a very respectable 
family indeed, — as much looked up to as any in their own 
parish, or the next to it. The Miss Dodsons had always 
been thought to hold up their heads very high, and no one 
was surprised the two eldest had married so well, — not 
at an early age, for that was not the practice of the Dodson 


BOY AND GIRL 


43 


family. There were particular ways of doing everything in 
that family: particular ways of bleaching the linen, of mak¬ 
ing the cowslip wine, curing the hams, and keeping the 
bottled gooseberries; so that no daughter of that house 
could be indifferent to the privilege of having been born a 
Dodson, rather than a Gibson or a Watson. Funerals were 
always conducted with peculiar propriety in the Dodson 
family: the hat-bands were never of a blue shade, the gloves 
never split at the thumb, everybody was a mourner who 
ought to be, and there were always scarfs for the bearers. 
When one of the family was in trouble or sickness, all the 
rest went to visit the unfortunate member, usually at the 
same time, and did not shrink from uttering the most dis¬ 
agreeable truths that correct family feeling dictated; if 
the illness or trouble was the sufferer’s own fault, it was not 
in the practice of the Dodson family to shrink from saying 
so. In short, there was in this family a peculiar tradition 
as to what was the right thing in household management 
and social demeanor, and the only bitter circumstance at¬ 
tending this superiority was a painful inability to approve 
the condiments or the conduct of families ungoverned by 
the Dodson tradition. A female Dodson, when in “ strange 
houses,” always ate dry bread with her tea, and declined 
any sort of preserves, having no confidence in the butter, 
and thinking that the preserves had probably begun to 
ferment from want of due sugar and boiling. There were 
some Dodsons less like the family than others, that was 
admitted; but in so far as they were “kin,” they were of 
necessity better than those who were “ no kin.” And it is 
remarkable that while no individual Dodson was satisfied 
with any other individual Dodson, each was satisfied, not 
only with him or her self, but with the Dodsons collectively. 
The feeblest member of a family — the one who has the 
least character — is often the merest epitome of the family 
habits and traditions; and Mrs. Tulliver was a thorough 
Dodson, though a mild one, as small-beer, so long as it is 
anything, is only describable as very weak ale: and though 
she had groaned a little in her youth under the yoke of her 


44 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


elder sisters, and still shed occasional tears at their sisterly 
reproaches, it was not in Mrs. Tulliver to be an innovator 
on the family ideas. She whs thankful to have been a Dod¬ 
son, and to have one child who took after her own family, 
at least in his features and complexion, in liking salt and in 
eating beans, which a Tulliver never did. 

In other respects the true Dodson was partly latent in 
Tom, and he was as far from appreciating his “ kin ” on the 
mother's side as Maggie herself, generally absconding for 
the day with a large supply of the most portable food, when 
he received timely warning that his aunts and uncles were 
coming, — a moral symptom from which his aunt Glegg de¬ 
duced the gloomiest views of his future. It was rather hard 
on Maggie that Tom always absconded without letting her 
into the secret, but the weaker sex are acknowledged to be 
serious impedimenta in cases of flight. 

On Wednesday, the day before the aunts and uncles were 
coming, there were such various and suggestive scents, as 
of plumcakes in the oven and jellies in the hot state, min¬ 
gled with the aroma of gravy, that it was impossible to feel 
altogether gloomy: there was hope in the air. Tom and 
Maggie made several inroads into the kitchen, and, like 
other marauders, were induced to keep aloof for a time 
only by being allowed to carry away a sufficient load of 
booty. 

“ Tom,” said Maggie, as they sat on the boughs of the 
elder-tree, eating their jam-puffs, “ shall you run away to¬ 
morrow? ” 

* No,” said Tom, slowly, when he had finished his puff, 
and was eying the third, which was to be divided between 
them, — “ no, I sha’n’t.” 

“Why, Tom? Because Lucy's coming?” 

“No,” said Tom, opening his pocket-knife and holding it 
over the puff, with his head on one side in a dubitative man¬ 
ner. (It was a difficult problem to divide that very irreg¬ 
ular polygon into two equal parts.) “ What do 1 care about 
Lucy? She’s only a girl, — she can't play at bandy” 

“Is it the tipsy-cake, then?” said Maggie, exerting her 


BOY AND GIRL 45 

hypothetic powers, while she leaned forward toward Tom 
with her eyes fixed on the hovering knife. 

“No, you silly, that’ll be good the day after. It’s the 
pudden. I know what the pudden’s to be, — apricot roll-up 
— 0 my buttons! ” 

With this interjection, the knife descended on the puff, 
and it was in two, but the result was not satisfactory to 
Tom, for he still eyed the halves doubtfully. At last he 
said, — 

“ Shut your eyes, Maggie.” 

“ What for?” 

“ You never mind what for. Shut ’em when I tell you.” 

Maggie obeyed. 

“ Now, which’ll you have, Maggie, — right hand or left? ” 

“ I’ll have that with the jam run out,” said Maggie, keep¬ 
ing her eyes shut to please Tom. 

“ Why, you don’t like that, you silly. You may have it if 
it comes to you fair, but I sha’n’t give it you without. Right 
or left, — you choose, now. Ha-a-a! ” said Tom, in a tone 
of exasperation, as Maggie peeped. “ You keep your eyes 
shut, now, else you sha’n’t have any.” * 

Maggie’s power of sacrifice did not extend so far; indeed, 
I fear she cared less that Tom should enjoy the utmost pos¬ 
sible amount of puff, than that he should be pleased with 
her for giving him the best bit. So she shut her eyes quite 
close, till Tom told her to “ say which,” and then she said, 
“ Left hand.” 

“ You’ve got it,” said Tom, in rather a bitter tone. 

“ What! the bit with the jam run out? ” 

“ No; here, take it,” said Tom, firmly, handing decidedly 
the best piece to Maggie. 

“Oh, please, Tom, have it; I don’t mind — I like the 
other; please take this.” 

“No, I sha’n’t,” said Tom, almost crossly, beginning on 
his own inferior piece. 

Maggie, thinking it was no use to contend further, began 
too, and ate up her half puff with considerable relish as well 
as rapidity. But Tom had finished first, and had to look 


46 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


on while Maggie ate her last morsel or two, feeling in himself 
a capacity for more. Maggie didn’t know Tom was looking 
at her; she was seesawing on the elder-bough, lost to almost 
everything but a vague sense of jam and idleness. 

“Oh, you greedy thing! ” said Tom, when she had 
swallowed the last morsel. He was conscious of having 
acted very fairly, and thought she ought to have con¬ 
sidered this, and made up to him for it. He would have 
refused a bit of hers beforehand, but one is naturally at a 
different point of view before and after one’s own share of 
puff is swallowed. 

Maggie turned quite pale. “ Oh, Tom, why didn’t you ask 
me? ” 

“ I wasn’t going to ask you for a bit, you greedy. You 
might have thought of it without, when you knew I gave 
you the best bit.” 

“ But I wanted you to have it; you know I did,” said 
Maggie, in an injured tone. 

“ Yes, but I wasn’t going to do what wasn’t fair, like 
Spouncer. He always takes the best bit, if you don’t punch 
him for it; an 4 if you choose the best with your eyes shut, 
he changes his hands. But if I go halves, I’ll go ’em fair; 
only I wouldn’t be a greedy.” 

With this cutting innuendo, Tom jumped down from his 
bough, and threw a stone with a “ hoigh! ” as a friendly at¬ 
tention to Yap, who had also been looking on while the 
eatables vanished, with an agitation of his ears and feelings 
which could hardly have been without bitterness. Yet the 
excellent dog accepted Tom’s attention with as much alacrity 
as if he had been treated quite generously. 

But Maggie, gifted with that superior power of misery 
which distinguishes the human being, and places him at a 
proud distance from the most melancholy chimpanzee, sat 
still on her bough, and gave herself up to the keen sense of 
unmerited reproach. She would have given the world not 
to have eaten all her puff, and to have saved some of it for 
Tom. Not but that the puff was very nice, for Maggie’s 
palate was not at all obtuse, but she would have gone without 


BOY AND GIRL 


47 


it many times over, sooner than Tom should call her greedy 
and be cross with her. And he had said he wouldn’t have 
it, and she ate it without thinking; how could she help it? 
The tears flowed so plentifully that Maggie saw nothing 
around her for the next ten minutes; but by that time re¬ 
sentment began to give way to the desire of reconciliation, 
and she jumped from her bough to look for Tom. He was 
no longer in the paddock behind the rickyard; where was 
he likely to be gone, and Yap with him? Maggie ran to 
the high bank against the great holly-tree, where she could 
see far away toward the Floss. There was Tom; but her 
heart sank again as she saw how far off he was on his 
way to the great river’ and that he had another companion 
besides Yap, — naughty Bob Jakin, whose official, if not 
natural, function of frightening the birds was just now at 
a standstill. Maggie felt sure that Bob was wicked, without 
very distinctly knowing why; unless it was because Bob’s 
mother was a dreadfully large fat woman, who lived at a 
queer round house down the river; and once, when Maggie 
and Tom had wandered thither, there rushed out a brindled 
dog that wouldn’t stop barking; and when Bob’s mother 
came out after it, and screamed above the barking to tell 
them not to be frightened, Maggie thought she was scold¬ 
ing them fiercely, and her heart beat with terror. Maggie 
thought it very likely that the round house had snakes on 
the floor, and bats in the bedroom; for she had seen Bob 
take off his cap to show Tom a little snake that was inside it, 
and another time he had a handful of young bats: alto¬ 
gether, he was an irregular character, perhaps even slightly 
diabolical, judging from his intimacy with snakes and bats; 
and to crown all, when Tom had Bob for a companion, he 
didn’t mind about Maggie, and would never let her go with 
him. 

It must be owned that Tom was fond of Bob’s company. 
How could it be otherwise? Bob knew, directly he saw a 
bird’s egg, whether it was a swallow’s, or a tomtit’s, or a 
yellow-hammer’s; he found out all the wasps’ nests, and 
could set all sorts of traps; he could climb the trees like 


48 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


a squirrel, and had quite a magical power of detecting hedge¬ 
hogs and stoats; and he had courage to do things that were 
rather naughty, such as making gaps in the hedgerows, 
throwing stones after the sheep, and killing a cat that was 
wandering incognito. Such qualities in an inferior, who 
could always be treated with authority in spite of his su¬ 
perior knowingness, had necessarily a fatal fascination for 
Tom; and every holiday-time Maggie was sure to have days 
of grief because he had gone off with Bob. 

Well! there was no hope for it; he was gone now, and 
Maggie could think of no comfort but to sit down by the 
hollow, or wander by the hedgerow, and fancy it was all 
different, refashioning her little world into just what she 
should like it to be. 

Maggie’s was a troublous life, and this was the form in 
which she took her opium. 

Meanwhile Tom, forgetting all about Maggie and the 
sting of reproach which he had left in her heart, was hurry¬ 
ing along with Bob, whom he had met accidentally, to the 
scene of a great rat-catching in a neighboring bam. Bob 
knew all about this particular affair, and spoke of the sport 
with an enthusiasm which no one who is not either divested 
of all manly feeling, or pitiably ignorant of rat-catching, can 
fail to imagine. For a person suspected of preternatural 
wickedness, Bob was really not so very villainous-looking; 
there was even something agreeable in his snub-nosed face, 
with its close-curled border of red hair. But then his 
trousers were always rolled up at the knee, for the con¬ 
venience of wading on the slightest notice; and his virtue, 
supposing it to exist, was undeniably “virtue in rags,” 
which, on the authority even of bilious philosophers, who 
think all well-dressed merit over-paid, is notoriously likely 
to remain unrecognized (perhaps because it is seen so 
seldom). 

“ I know the chap as owns the ferrets,” said Bob, in a 
hoarse treble voice, as he shuffled along, keeping his blue 
eyes fixed on the river, like an amphibious animal who fore¬ 
saw occasion for darting in. “ He lives up the Kennel Yard 


BOY AND GIRL 


49 


at Sut Ogg’s, he does. He’s the biggest rot-catcher any¬ 
where, he is. I’d sooner be a rot-catcher nor anything, I 
would. The moles is nothing to the rots. But Lors! you 
mun ha’ ferrets. Dogs is no good. Why, there’s that dog, 
now! ” Bob continued, pointing with an air of disgust to¬ 
ward Yap, “ he’s no more good wi’ a rot nor nothin’. I see 
it myself, I did, at the rot-catchin’ i’ your feyther’s barn.” 

Yap, feeling the withering influence of this scorn, tucked 
his tail in and shrank close to Tom’s leg, who felt a little 
hurt for him, but had not the superhuman courage to seem 
behindhand with Bob in contempt for a dog who made so 
poor a figure. 

“ No, no,” he said, “ Yap’s no good at sport. I’ll have 
regular good dogs for rats and everything, when I’ve done 
school.” 

“ Hev ferrets, Measter Tom,” said Bob, eagerly, — “ them 
white ferrets wi’ pink eyes; Lors, you might catch your own 
rots, an’ you might put a rot in a cage wi’ a ferret, an’ see 
’em fight, you might. That’s what I’d do, I know, an’ it ’ud 
be better fun a’most nor seein’ two chaps fight, — if it 
wasn’t them chaps as sold cakes an’ oranges at the Fair, as 
the things flew out o’ their baskets, an’ some o’ the cakes 
was smashed — But they tasted just as good,” added Bob, 
by way of note or addendum, after a moment’s pause. 

“But, I say, Bob,” said Tom, in a tone of deliberation, 
“ ferrets are nasty biting things, — they’ll bite a fellow 
without being set on.” 

“ Lors! why, that’s the beauty on ’em. If a chap lays 
hold o’ your ferret, he won’t be long before he hollows out a 
good un, he won’t.” 

At this moment a striking incident made the boys pause 
suddenly in their walk. It was the plunging of some small 
body in the water from among the neighboring bulrushes; 
if it was not a water-rat, Bob intimated that he was ready 
to undergo the most unpleasant consequences. 

“Hoigh! Yap, — hoigh! there he is,” said Tom, clap¬ 
ping his hands, as the little black snout made its arrowy 
course to the opposite bank. “ Seize him, lad! seize him! ” 


50 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 

Yap agitated his ears and wrinkled his brow's, but de¬ 
clined to plunge, trying whether barking would not answer 
the purpose just as well. 

“Ugh! you coward! ” said Tom, and kicked him over, 
feeling humiliated as a sportsman to possess so poor-spirited 
an animal. Bob abstained from remark and passed on, 
choosing, however, to walk in the shallow edge of the over¬ 
flowing river by way of change. 

“ He’s none so full now, the Floss isn’t,” said Bob, as he 
kicked the water-up before him, with an agreeable sense 
of being insolent to it. “ Why, last ’ear, the meadows was 
all one sheet o’ water, they was.” 

“ Ay, but,” said Tom, whose mind was prone to see an 
opposition between statements that were really accordant, 

— f but there was a big flood once, when the Round Pool 
was made. 1 know there was, ’cause father says so. And 
the sheep and cows were all drowned, and the boats went 
all over the fields ever such a way.” 

“ I don’t care about a flood cornin’,” said Bob; “ I don’t 
mind the water, no more nor the land. I’d swim, / would.” 

“ Ah, but if you got nothing to eat for ever so long ? ” 
said Tom, his imagination becoming quite active under the 
stimulus of that dread. “ When I’m a man, I shall make a 
boat with a wooden house on the top of it, like Noah’s 
ark, and keep plenty to eat in it, — rabbits and things, 

— all ready. And then if the flood came, you know, 
Bob, I shouldn’t mind. And I’d take you in, if I saw 
you swimming,” he added, in the tone of a benevolent 
patron. 

“ I aren’t frighted,” said Bob, to whom hunger did not 
appear so appalling. “ But I’d get in an’ knock the rabbits 
on th’ head when you wanted to eat ’em.” 

“ Ah, and I should have halfpence, and we’d play at 
heads-and-tails,” said Tom, not contemplating the possi¬ 
bility that this recreation might have fewer charms for his 
mature age. “ I’d divide fair to begin with, and then we’d 
see who’d win.” 

“ I’ve got a halfpenny o’ my own,” said Bob, proudly, 


BOY AND GIRL 51 

coming out of the water and tossing his halfpenny in the 
air. “ Yeads or tails? ” 

“ Tails,” said Tom, instantly fired with the desire to win. 

“ It’s yeads,” said Bob, hastily, snatching up the half¬ 
penny as it fell. 

“ It wasn’t,” said Tom, loudly and peremptorily. “ You 
give me the halfpenny; I’ve won it fair.” 

“ I sha’n’t,” said Bob, holding it tight in his pocket. 

“Then I’ll make you; see if I don’t,” said Tom. 

“ You can’t make me do nothing, you can’t,” said Bob. 

“ Yes, I can.” 

“ No, you can’t.” 

“ I’m master.” 

" I don’t care for you.” 

“ But I’ll make you care, you cheat,” said Tom, collaring 
Bob and shaking him. 

“ You get out wi’ you,” said Bob, giving Tom a kick. 

Tom’s blood was thoroughly up: he went at Bob with 
a lunge and threw him down, but Bob seized hold and kept 
it like a cat, and pulled Tom down after him. They 
struggled fiercely on the ground for a moment or two, till 
Tom, pinning Bob down by the shoulders, thought he had 
the mastery. 

“ You, say you’ll give me the halfpenny now,” he said, 
with difficulty, while he exerted himself to keep the com¬ 
mand of Bob’s arms. 

But at this moment Yap, who had been running on be¬ 
fore, returned barking to the scene of action, and saw a 
favorable opportunity for biting Bob’s bare leg not only 
with impunity but with honor. The pain from Yap’s teeth, 
instead of surprising Bob into a relaxation of his hold, gave 
it a fiercer tenacity, and with a new exertion of his force 
he pushed Tom backward and got uppermost. But now 
Yap, who could get no sufficient purchase before, set his 
teeth in a new place, so that Bob, harassed in this way, let 
go his hold of Tom, and, almost throttling Yap, flung him 
into the river. By this time Tom was up again, and before 
Bob had quite recovered his balance after the act of swing- 


52 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


ing Yap, Tom fell upon him, threw him down, and got his 
knees firmly on Bob’s chest. 

“ You give me the halfpenny now,” said Tom. 

“ Take it,” said Bob, sulkily. 

“ No, I sha’n’t take it; you give it me.” 

Bob took the halfpenny out of his pocket, and threw it 
away from him on the ground. 

Tom loosed his hold, and left Bob to rise. 

“ There the halfpenny lies,” he said. “ I don’t want your 
halfpenny; I wouldn’t have kept it. But you wanted to 
cheat; I hate a cheat. I sha’n’t go along with you any 
more,” he added, turning round homeward, not without 
casting a regret toward the rat-catching and other pleasures 
which he must relinquish along with Bob’s society. 

“ You may let it alone, then,” Bob called out after him. 
“ I shall cheat if I like; there’s no fun i’ playing else; and 
I know where there’s a goldfinch’s nest, but I’ll take care 
you don’t. An’ you’re a nasty fightin’ turkey-cock, you 
are-” 

Tom walked on without looking round, and Yap followed 
his example, the cold bath having moderated his passions. 

“ Go along wi’ you, then, wi’ your drowned dog; I 
wouldn’t own such a dog — I wouldn’t,” said Bob, getting 
louder, in a last effort to sustain his defiance. But Tom 
was not to be provoked into turning round, and Bob’s voice 
began to falter a little as he said, — 

“An’ I’n gi’en you everything, an’ showed you every¬ 
thing, an’ niver wanted nothin’ from you. An’ there’s your 
horn-handed knife, then, as you gi’en me.” Here Bob flung 
the knife as far as he could after Tom’s retreating foot¬ 
steps. But it produced no effect, except the sense in Bob’s 
mind that there was a terrible void in his lot, now that knife 
was gone. 

He stood still till Tom had passed through the gate and 
disappeared behind the hedge. The knife would do no good 
on the ground there; it wouldn’t vex Tom; and pride or 
resentment was a feeble passion in Bob’s mind compared 
with the love of a pocket-knife. His very fingers sent en- 


BOY AND GIRL 


53 


treating thrills that he would go and clutch that familiar 
rough buck’s-horn handle, which they had so often grasped 
for mere affection, as it lay idle in his pocket. And there 
were two blades, and they had just been sharpened! What 
is life without a pocket-knife to him who has once tasted 
a higher existence? No; to throw the handle after the 
hatchet is a comprehensible act of desperation but to throw 
one’s pocket-knife after an implacable friend is clearly in 
every sense a hyperbole, or throwing beyond the mark. So 
Bob shuffled back to the spot where the beloved knife lay 
in the dirt, and felt quite a new pleasure in clutching it 
again after the temporary separation, in opening one blade 
after the other, and feeling their edge with his well-hardened 
thumb. Poor Bob! he was not sensitive on the point of 
honor, not a chivalrous character. That fine moral aroma 
would not have been thought much of by the public opinion 
of Kennel Yard, which was the very focus or heart of Bob’s 
world, even if it could have made itself perceptible there; 
yet, for all that, he was not utterly a sneak and a thief as 
our friend Tom had hastily decided. 

But Tom, you perceive, was rather a Rhadamanthine per¬ 
sonage, having more than the usual share of boy’s justice 
in him, — the justice that desires to hurt culprits as much 
as they deserve to be hurt, and is troubled with no doubts 
concerning the exact amount of their deserts. Maggie saw 
a cloud on his brow when he came home, which checked her 
joy at his coming so much sooner than she had expected, and 
she dared hardly speak to him as he stood silently throw¬ 
ing the small gravel-stones into the mill-dam. It is not 
pleasant to give up a rat-catching when you have set your 
mind on it. But if Tom had told his strongest feeling at 
that moment, he would have said, “ I’d do just the same 
again.” That was his usual mode of viewing his past ac¬ 
tions; whereas Maggie was always wishing she had done 
something different. 


54 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


CHAPTER VII 

ENTER THE AUNTS AND UNCLES 

T HE Dodsons were certainly a handsome family, and 
Mrs. Glegg was not the least handsome of the sisters. 
As she sat in Mrs. Tulliver’s arm-chair, no impartial ob¬ 
server could have denied that for a woman of fifty she 
had a very comely face and figure, though Tom and Maggie 
considered their aunt Glegg as the type of ugliness. It is 
true she despised the advantages of costume, for though, 
as she often observed, no woman had better clothes, it 
was not her way to wear her new things out before her old 
ones. Other women, if they liked, might have their best 
thread-lace in every wash; but when Mrs. Glegg died, it 
would be found that she had better lace laid by in the right- 
hand drawer of her wardrobe in the Spotted Chamber than 
ever Mrs. Wooll of St. Ogg’s had bought in her life, although 
Mrs. Wooll wore her lace before it was paid for. So of her 
curled fronts: Mrs. Glegg had doubtless the glossiest and 
crispest brown curls in her drawers, as well as curls in various 
degrees of fuzzy laxness; but to look out on the week-day 
world from under a crisp and glossy front would be to in¬ 
troduce a most dreamlike and unpleasant confusion between 
the sacred and the secular. Occasionally, indeed, Mrs. Glegg 
wore one of her third-best fronts on a week-day visit, but 
not at a sister’s house; especially not at Mrs. Tulliver’s, 
who, since her marriage, had hurt her sister’s feelings greatly 
by wearing her own hair, though, as Mrs. Glegg observed 
to Mrs. Deane, a mother of a family, like Bessy, with a 
husband always going to law, might have been expected 
to know better. But Bessy was always weak! 

So if Mrs. Glegg’s front to-day was more fuzzy and lax 
than usual, 3he had a design under it: she intended the most 
pointed and cutting allusion to Mrs. Tulliver’s bunches of 
blond curls, separated from each other by a due wave of 
smoothness on each side of the parting. Mrs. Tulliver 


BOY AND GIRL 


55 


had shed tears several times at sister Glegg’s unkindness on 
the subject of these unmatronly curls, but the consciousness 
of looking the handsomer for them naturally administered 
support. Mrs. Glegg chose to wear her bonnet in the house 
to-day, — untied and tilted slightly, of course, — a fre¬ 
quent practice of hers when she was on a visit, and happened 
to be in a severe humor: she didn’t know what draughts 
there might be in strange houses. For the same reason she 
wore a small sable tippet, which reached just to her 
shoulders, and was very far from meeting across her well- 
formed chest, while her long neck was protected by a 
chevaux-de-frise of miscellaneous frilling. One would need 
to be learned in the fashions of those times to know how 
far in the rear of them Mrs. Glegg’s slate-colored silk gown 
must have been; but from certain constellations of small 
yellow spots upon it, and a mouldy odor about it suggestive 
of a damp clothes-chest, it was probable that it belonged to 
a stratum of garments just old enough to have come re¬ 
cently into wear. 

Mrs. Glegg held her large gold watch‘in her hand with 
the many-doubled chain round her fingers, and observed to 
Mrs. Tulliver, who had just returned from a visit to the 
kitchen, that whatever it might be by other people’s clocks 
and watches, it was gone half-past twelve by hers. 

“ I don’t know what ails sister Pullet,” she continued. 
“ It used to be the way in our family for one to be as 
early as another, — I’m sure it was so in my poor father’s 
time, — and not for one sister to sit half an hour before 
the others came. But if the ways o’ the family are altered, 
it sha’n’t be my fault; I’ll never be the one to come into a 
house when all the rest are going away. I wonder at sister 
Deane, — she used to be more like me. But if you’ll take 
my advice, Bessy, you’ll put the dinner forrard a bit, sooner 
than put it back, because folks are late as ought to ha’ 
known better.” 

“ Oh, dear, there’s no fear but what they’ll be all here in 
time, sister,” said Mrs. Tulliver, in her mild-peevish tone. 
“ The dinner won’t be ready till half-past one. But if it’s 


56 MILL ON THE FLOSS 

long for you to wait, let me fetch you a cheesecake and a 
glass o’ wine.” 

“ Well, Bessy! ” said Mrs. Glegg, with a bitter smile and 
a scarcely perceptible toss of her head, “ I should ha’ thought 
you’d known your own sister better. I never did eat be¬ 
tween meals, and I’m not going to begin. Not but what I 
hate that nonsense of having your dinner at half-past one, 
when you might have it at one. You was never brought up 
in that way, Bessy.” 

“Why, Jane, what can I do? Mr. Tulliver doesn’t like 
his dinner before two o’clock, but I put it half an hour 
earlier because o’ you.” 

“ Yes, yes, I know how it is with husbands, — they’re for 
putting everything off; they’ll put the dinner off till after 
tea, if they’ve got wives as are weak enough to give in to 
such work; but it’s a pity for you, Bessy, as you haven’t 
got more strength o’ mind. It’ll be well if your children 
don’t suffer for it. And I hope you’ve not gone and got a 
great dinner for us, — going to expense for your sisters, as 
’ud sooner eat a crust o’ dry bread nor help to ruin you 
with extravagance. I wonder you don’t take pattern by 
your sister Deane; she’s far more sensible. And here you’ve 
got two children to provide for, and your husband’s spent 
your fortin i’ going to law, and’s likely to spend his own 
too. A boiled joint, as you could make broth of for the 
kitchen,” Mrs. Glegg added, in a tone of emphatic protest, 
“ and a plain pudding, with a spoonful o’ sugar, and no 
spice, ’ud be far more becoming.” 

With sister Glegg in this humor, there was a cheerful 
prospect for the day. Mrs. Tulliver never went the length 
of quarrelling with her, any more than a water-fowl that puts 
out its leg in a deprecating manner can be said to quarrel 
with a boy who throws stones. But this point of the dinner 
was a tender one, and not at all new, so that Mrs. Tulliver 
could make the same answer she had often made before. 

“ Mr. Tulliver says he always will have a good dinner for 
his friends while he can pay for it,” she said; “ and he’s a 
right to do as he likes in his own house, sister.” 


BOY AND GIRL 


57 


“Well, Bessy, I can’t leave your children enough out o’ 
my savings to keep ’em from ruin. And you mustn’t look 
to having any o’ Mr. Glegg’s money, for it’s well if I don’t 
go first, — he comes of a long-lived family; and if he was 
to die and leave me well for my life, he’d tie all the money 
up to go back to his own kin.” 

The sound of wheels While Mrs. Glegg was speaking was 
an interruption highly welcomed to Mrs. Tulliver, who 
hastened out to receive sister Pullet; it must be sister Pullet, 
because the sound was that of a four-wheel. 

Mrs. Glegg tossed her head and looked rather sour about 
the mouth at the thought of the “ four-wheel.” She had a 
strong opinion on that subject. 

Sister Pullet was in tears when the one-horse chaise 
stopped before Mrs. Tulliver’s door, and it was apparently 
requisite that she should shed a few more before getting out; 
for though her husband and Mrs. Tulliver stood ready to 
support her, she sat still and shook her head sadly, as she 
looked through her tears at the vague distance. 

“ Why, whativer is the matter, sister? ” said Mrs. Tulli¬ 
ver. She was not an imaginative woman, but it occurred to 
her that the large toilet-glass in sister Pullet’s best bedroom 
was possibly broken for the second time. 

There was no reply but a further shake of the head, as 
Mrs. Pullet slowly rose and got down from the chaise, not 
without casting a glance at Mr. Pullet to see that he was 
guarding her handsome silk dress from injury. Mr. Pullet 
was a small man, with a high nose, small twinkling eyes, and 
thin lips, in a fresh-looking suit of black and a white cravat, 
that seemed to have been tied very tight on some higher 
principle than that of mere personal ease. He bore about 
the same relation to his tall, good-looking wife, with her bal¬ 
loon sleeves, abundant mantle, and a large befeathered and 
beribboned bonnet, as a small fishing-smack bears to a brig 
with all its sails spread. 

Mrs. Pullet brushed each door-post with great nicety, 
about the latitude of her shoulders (at that period a woman 
was truly ridiculous to an instructed eye if she did not 


58 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


measure a yard and a half across the shoulders), and having 
done that sent the muscles of her face in quest of fresh tears 
as she advanced into the parlor where Mrs. Glegg was seated. 

“ Well, sister, you’re late; what’s the matter? ” said Mrs. 
Glegg, rather sharply, as they shook hands. 

Mrs. Pullet sat down, lifting up her mantle carefully be¬ 
hind, before she answered, — 

“ She’s gone,” unconsciously using an impressive figure of 
rhetoric. 

“ It isn’t the glass this time, then,” thought Mrs. Tulliver. 

“ Died the day before yesterday,” continued Mrs. Pullet; 

“ an’ her legs was as thick as my body,” she added, with deep 
sadness, after a pause. “ They’d tapped her no end o’ 
times, and the water — they say you might ha’ swum in it, 
if you’d liked.” 

“ Well, Sophy, it’s a mercy she’s gone, then, whoever she 
may be,” said Mrs. Glegg, with the promptitude and em¬ 
phasis of a mind naturally clear and decided; “ but I can’t 
think who you’re talking of, for my part.” 

“ But I know,” said Mrs. Pullet, sighing and shaking her 
head; “ and there isn’t another such a dropsy in the parish. 
I know as it’s old Mrs. Sutton o’ the Twentylands.” 

“ Well, she’s no kin o’ yours, nor much acquaintance as 
I’ve ever heard of,” said Mrs. Glegg, who always cried just 
as much as was proper when anything happened to her own 
“ kin,” but not on other occasions. 

“ She’s so much acquaintance as I’ve seen her legs when 
they was like bladders. And an old lady as had doubled her 
money over and over again, and kept it all in her own man¬ 
agement to the last, and had her pocket with her keys in 
under her pillow constant. There isn’t many old purish’ners 
like her, I doubt.” 

“ And they say she’d took as much physic as ’ud fill a 
wagon,” observed Mr. Pullet. 

“ Ah! ” sighed Mrs. Pullet, “ she’d another complaint ever 
so many years before she had the dropsy, and the doctors 
couldn’t make out what it was. And she said to me, when 
I went to see her last Christmas, she said, ‘ Mrs.' Pullet, if 


BOY AND GIRL 


59 


ever you have the dropsy, you’ll think o’ me.’ She did say 
so,” added Mrs. Pullet, beginning to cry bitterly again; 
“ those were her very words. And she’s to be buried o’ Sat¬ 
urday, and Pullet’s bid to the funeral.” 

“ Sophy,” said Mrs. Glegg, unable any longer to contain 
her spirit of rational remonstrance, — “ Sophy, I wonder at 
you, fretting and injuring your health about people as don’t 
belong to you. Your poor father never did so, nor your 
aunt Frances neither, nor any o’ the family as I ever heared 
of. You couldn’t fret no more than this, if we’d heared as 
our cousin Abbott had died sudden without making his will.” 

Mrs. Pullet was silent, having to finish her crying, and 
rather flattered than indignant at being upbraided for cry¬ 
ing too much. It was not everybody who could afford to 
cry so much about their neighbors who had left them noth¬ 
ing; but Mrs. Pullet had married a gentleman farmer, and 
had leisure and money to carry her crying and everything 
else to the highest pitch of respectability. 

“ Mrs. Sutton didn’t die without making her will, though,” 
said Mr. Pullet, with a confused sense that he was saying 
something to sanction his wife’s tears; “ ours is a rich parish, 
but they say there’s nobody else to leave as many thousands 
behind ’em as Mrs. Sutton. And she’s left no leggicies to 
speak on, — left it all in a lump to her husband’s nevvy.” 

“ There wasn’t much good i’ being so rich, then,” said 
Mrs. Glegg, “ if she’d got none but husband’s kin to leave it 
to. It’s poor work when that’s all you’ve got to pinch your¬ 
self for. Not as I’m one o’ those as ’ud like to die without 
leaving more money out at interest than other folks had 
reckoned; but it’s a poor tale when it must go out o’ your 
own family.” 

“ I’m sure, sister,” said Mrs. Pullet, who had recovered 
sufficiently to take off her veil and fold it carefully, “ it’s a 
nice sort o’ man as Mrs. Sutton has left her money to, for 
he’s troubled with the asthmy, and goes to bed every night 
at eight o’clock. He told me about it himself — as free as 
could be — one Sunday when he came to our church. He 
wears a hare-skin on his chest, and has a trembling in his 


60 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


talk, — quite a gentleman sort o’ man. I told him there 
wasn’t many months in the year as I wasn’t under the doc¬ 
tor’s hands. And he said, ‘ Mrs. Pullet, I can feel for you.’ 
That was what he said, — the very words. Ah! ” sighed 
Mrs. Pullet, shaking her head at the idea that there were 
but few who could enter fully into her experiences in pink 
mixture and white mixture, strong stuff in small bottles, and 
weak stuff in large bottles, damp boluses at a shilling, 
and draughts at eighteenpence. “ Sister, I may as well go 
and take my bonnet off now. Did you see as the cap-box 
was put out?” she added, turning to her husband. 

Mr. Pullet, by an unaccountable lapse of memory, had 
forgotten it, and hastened out, with a stricken conscience, 
to remedy the omission. 

“ They’ll bring it upstairs, sister,” said Mrs. Tulliver, 
wishing to go at once, lest Mrs. Glegg should begin to ex¬ 
plain her feelings about Sophy’s being the first Dodson who 
ever ruined her constitution with doctor’s stuff. 

Mrs. Tulliver was fond of going upstairs with her sister 
Pullet, and looking thoroughly at her cap before she put it 
on her head, and discussing millinery in general. This was 
part of Bessy’s weakness that stirred Mrs. Glegg’s sisterly 
compassion: Bessy went far too well dressed, considering; 
and she was too proud to dress her child in the good cloth¬ 
ing her sister Glegg gave her from the primeval strata of her 
wardrobe; it was a sin and a shame to buy anything to dress 
that child, if it wasn’t a pair of shoes. In this particular, 
however, Mrs. Glegg did her sister Bessy some injustice, for 
Mrs. Tulliver had really made great-efforts to induce Maggie 
to wear a leghorn bonnet and a dyed silk frock made out of 
her aunt Glegg’s, but the result had been such that Mrs. 
Tulliver was obliged to bury them in her maternal bosom; 
for Maggie, declaring that the frock smelt of nasty dye, had 
taken an opportunity of basting it together with the roast 
beef the first Sunday she wore it, and finding this scheme 
answer, she had subsequently pumped on the bonnet with 
its green ribbons, so as to give it a general resemblance to 
a sage cheese garnished with withered lettuces. I must urge 


BOY AND GIRL 


61 


in excuse for Maggie, that Tom had laughed at her in the 
bonnet, and said she looked like an old Judy. Aunt Pullet, 
too, made presents of clothes, but these were always pretty 
enough to please Maggie as well as her mother. Of all her 
sisters, Mrs. Tulliver certainly preferred her sister Pullet, 
not without a return of preference; but- Mrs. Pullet was 
sorry Bessy had those naughty, awkward children; she would 
do the best she could by them, but it was a pity they weren’t 
as good and as pretty as sister Deane’s child. Maggie and 
Tom, on their part, thought their aunt Pullet tolerable, 
chiefly because she was not their aunt Glegg. Tom always 
declined to go more than once during his holidays to see 
either of them. Both his uncles tipped him that once, of 
course; but at his aunt Pullet’s there were a great many 
toads to pelt in the cellar-area, so that he preferred the 
visit to her. Maggie shuddered at the toads, and dreamed 
of them horribly, but she liked her uncle Pullet’s musical 
snuff-box. Still, it was agreed by the sisters, in Mrs. Tulli- 
ver’s absence, that the Tulliver blood did not mix well with 
the Dodson blood; that, in fact, poor Bessy’s children were 
Tullivers, and that T.om, notwithstanding he had the Dod¬ 
son complexion, was likely to be as “ contrairy ” as his 
father. As for Maggie, she was the picture of her aunt Moss, 
Mr. Tulliver’s sister, — a large-boned woman, who had mar¬ 
ried as poorly as could be; had no china, and had a husband 
who had much ado to pay his rent. But when Mrs. Pullet 
was alone with Mrs. Tulliver upstairs, the remarks were nat¬ 
urally to the disadvantage of Mrs. Glegg, and they agreed, 
in confidence, that there was no knowing what sort of fright 
sister Jane would come out next. But their tete-a-tete was 
curtailed by the appearance of Mrs. Deane with little Lucy; 
and Mrs. Tulliver had to look on with a silent pang while 
Lucy’s blond curls were adjusted. It was quite unaccount¬ 
able that Mrs. Deane, the thinnest and sallowest of all the 
Miss Dodsons, should have had this child, who might have 
been taken for Mrs. Tulliver’s any day. And Maggie always 
looked twice as dark as usual when she was by the side of 
Lucy. 


62 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


She did to-day, when she and Tom came in from the gar¬ 
den with their father and their uncle Glegg. Maggie had 
thrown her bonnet off very carelessly, and coming in with 
her hair rough as well as out of curl, rushed at once to Lucy, 
who was standing by her mother’s knee. Certainly the con¬ 
trast between the cousins was conspicuous, and to superficial 
eyes was very much to the disadvantage of Maggie, though 
a connoisseur might have seen “ points ” in her which had a 
higher promise for maturity than Lucy’s natty complete¬ 
ness. It was like the contrast between a rough, dark, over¬ 
grown puppy and a white kitten. Lucy put up the neatest 
little rosebud mouth to be kissed; everything about her was 
neat, — her little round neck, with the row of coral beads; 
her little straight nose, not at all snubby; her little clear 
eyebrows, rather darker than her curls, to match her hazel 
eyes, which looked up with shy pleasure at Maggie, taller by 
the head, though scarcely a year older. Maggie always 
looked at Lucy with delight. She was fond of fancying a 
world where the people never got any larger than children 
of their own age, and she made the queen of it just like 
Lucy, with a little crown on her head, $nd a little sceptre in 
her hand — only the queen was Maggie herself in Lucy’s 
form. 

“ Oh, Lucy,” she burst out, after kissing her, “ you’ll stay 
with Tom and me, won’t you? Oh, kiss her, Tom.” 

Tom, too, had come up to Lucy, but he was not going to 
kiss her — no; he came up to her with Maggie, because it 
seemed easier, on the whole, than saying, “ How do you 
do?” to all those aunts and uncles. He stood looking at 
nothing in particular, with the blushing, awkward air and 
semi-smile which are common to shy boys when in company, 
— very much as if they had come into the world by mistake, 
and found it in a degree of undress that was quite embar¬ 
rassing. 

“Heyday! ” said aunt Glegg, with loud emphasis. “Do 
little boys and gells come into a room without taking notice 
o’ their uncles and aunts? That wasn’t the way when I was 
a little gell.” 


BOY AND GIRL 


63 


“ Go and speak to your aunts and uncles, my dears/’ said 
Mrs. Tulliver, looking anxious and melancholy. She wanted 
to whisper to Maggie a command to go and have her hair 
brushed. 

“Well, and how do you do? And I hope you’re good 
children, are you ? ” said aunt Glegg, in the same loud, em¬ 
phatic way, as she took their hands, hurting them with her 
large rings, and kissing their cheeks much against their de¬ 
sire. “ Look up, Tom, look up. Boys as go to boarding- 
schools should hold their heads up. Look at me now.” Tom 
declined that pleasure apparently, for he tried to draw his 
hand away. “ Put your hair behind your ears, Maggie, and 
keep your frock on your shoulder.” 

Aunt Glegg always spoke to them in this loud, emphatic 
way, as if she considered them deaf, or perhaps rather 
idiotic; it was a means, she thought, of making them feel 
that they were accountable creatures, and might be a salu¬ 
tary check on naughty tendencies. Bessy’s children were 
so spoiled — they’d need have somebody to make them feel 
their duty. 

“ Well, my dears,” said aunt Pullet, in a compassionate 
voice, “ you grow wonderful fast. I doubt they’ll* outgrow 
their strength,” she added, looking over their heads, with a 
melancholy expression, at their mother. “ I think the gell has 
too much hair. I’d have it thinned and cut shorter, sister, 
if I was you: it isn’t good for her health. It’s that as 
makes her skin so brown, I shouldn’t wonder. Don’t you 
think so, sister Deane ? ” 

“ I can’t say, I’m sure, sister,” said Mrs. Deane, shutting 
her lips close again, and looking at Maggie with a critical 
eye. 

“ No, no,” said Mr. Tulliver, “ the child’s healthy enough; 
there’s nothing ails her. There’s red wheat as well as white, 
for that matter, and some like the dark grain best. But it 
’ud be as well if Bessy ’ud have the child’s hair cut, so as it 
’ud lie smooth.” 

A dreadful resolve was gathering in Maggie’s breast, but 
it was arrested by the desire to know from her aunf 


64 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


Deane whether she would leave Lucy behind. Aunt Deane 
would hardly ever let Lucy come to see them. After 
various reasons for refusal, Mrs. Deane appealed to Lucy 
herself. 

“ You wouldn’t like to stay behind without mother, should 
you, Lucy ? ” 

“ Yes, please, mother,” said Lucy, timidly, blushing very 
pink all over her little neck. 

“Well done, Lucy! Let her stay, Mrs. Deane, let her 
stay,” said Mr. Deane, a large but alert-looking man, with 
a type of 'physique to be seen in all ranks of English society, 
— bald crown, red whiskers, full forehead, and general solid¬ 
ity without heaviness. You may see noblemen like Mr. 
Deane, and you may see grocers or day-laborers like him; 
but the keenness of his brown eyes was less common than 
his contour. He held a silver snuff-box very tightly in his 
hand, and now and then exchanged a pinch with Mr. Tulli- 
ver, whose box was only silver-mounted, so that it was natu¬ 
rally a joke between them that Mr. Tulliver wanted to ex¬ 
change snuff-boxes also. Mr. Deane’s box had been given 
him by the superior partners in the firm to which he be¬ 
longed, at the same time that they gave him a share in the 
business, in acknowledgment of his valuable services as 
manager. No man was thought more highly of in St. Ogg’s 
than Mr. Deane; and some persons were even of opinion 
that Miss Susan Dodson, who was once held to have made 
the worst match of all the Dodson sisters, might one day 
ride in a better carriage, and live in a better house, even 
than her sister Pullet. There was no knowing where a man 
would stop, who had got his foot into a great mill-owning, 
ship-owning business like that of Guest & Co., with a bank¬ 
ing concern attached. And Mrs. Deane, as her intimate 
female friends observed, was proud and “having” enough; 
she wouldn’t let her husband stand still in the world for 
want of spurring. 

“ Maggie,” said Mrs. Tulliver, beckoning Maggie to her, 
and whispering in her ear, as soon as this point of Lucy’s 
staying was settled, “ go and get your hair brushed, do, for 


BOY AND GIRL 65 

shame. I told you not to come in without going to Martha 
first; you know I did.” 

“ Tom, come out with me,” whispered Maggie, pulling his 
sleeve as she passed him; and Tom followed willingly enough. 

“ Come upstairs with me, Tom,” she whispered, when 
they were outside the door. “ There’s something I want to 
do before dinner.” 

“ There’s no time to play at anything before dinner,” said 
Tom, whose imagination was impatient of any intermediate 
prospect. 

“ Oh yes, there is time for this; do come, Tom.” 

Tom followed Maggie upstairs into her mother’s room, 
and saw her go at once to a drawer, from which she took 
out a large pair of scissors. 

“ What are they for, Maggie ? ” said Tom, feeling his curi¬ 
osity awakened. 

Maggie answered by seizing her front locks and cutting 
them straight across the middle of her forehead. 

“ Oh, my buttons! Maggie, you’ll catch it! ” exclaimed 
Tom; “ you’d better not cut any more off.” 

Snip! went the great scissors again while Tom was speak¬ 
ing, and he couldn’t help feeling it was rather good fun; 
Maggie would look so queer. 

“ Here, Tom, cut it behind for me,” said Maggie, excited 
by her own daring, and anxious to finish the deed. 

“ You’ll catch it, you know,” said Tom, nodding his head 
in an admonitory manner, and hesitating a little as he took 
the scissors. 

“Never mind, make ha'ste! ” said Maggie, giving a little 
stamp with her foot. Her cheeks were quite flushed. 

The black locks were so thick, nothing could be more 
tempting to a lad who had already tasted the forbidden 
pleasure of cutting the pony’s mane. I speak to those who 
know the satisfaction of making a pair of shears meet 
through a duly resisting mass of hair. One delicious grinding 
snip, and then another and another, and the hinder-locks 
fell heavily on the floor, and Maggie stood cropped in a 
jagged, uneven manner, but with a sense of clearness and 


66 MILL ON THE FLOSS 

freedom, as if she had emerged from a wood into the open 
plain. 

“ Oh, Maggie/' said Tom, jumping round her, and slapping 
his knees as he laughed, “ Oh, my buttons! what a queer 
thing you look! Look at yourself in the glass; you look like 
the idiot we throw out nutshells to at school." 

Maggie felt an unexpected pang. She had thought before¬ 
hand chiefly of her own deliverance from her teasing hair 
and teasing remarks about it, and something also of the tri¬ 
umph she should have over her mother and her aunts by 
this very decided course of action; she didn't want her hair 
to look pretty, — that was out of the question, — she only 
wanted people to think her a clever little girl, and not to 
find fault with her. But now, when Tom began to laugh at 
her, and say she was like the idiot, the affair had quite a new 
aspect. She looked in the glass, and still Tom laughed and 
clapped his hands, and Maggie’s flushed cheeks began to 
pale, and her lips to tremble a little. 

“ Oh, Maggie, you'll have to go down to dinner directly," 
said Tom. “Oh, my!" 

“ Don’t laugh at me, Tom," said Maggie, in a passionate 
tone, with an outburst of angry tears, stamping, and giving 
him a push. 

“ Now, then, spitfire! " said Tom. “ What did you cut it 
off for, then? I shall go down: I can smell the dinner 
going in." 

He hurried downstairs and left poor Maggie to that bitter 
sense of the irrevocable which was almost an every-day ex¬ 
perience of her small soul. She 'could see clearly enough, 
now the thing was done, that it was very foolish, and that 
she should have to hear and think more about her hair than 
ever; for Maggie rushed to her deeds with passionate im¬ 
pulse, and then saw not only their consequences, but what 
would have happened if they had not been done, with all 
the detail and exaggerated circumstance of an active im¬ 
agination. Tom never did the same sort of foolish things as 
Maggie, having a wonderful instinctive discernment of what 
would turn to his advantage or disadvantage; and so it hap- 



BOY AND GIRL 


67 


pened, that though he was much more wilful and inflexible 
than Maggie, his mother hardly ever called him naughty. 
But if Tom did make a mistake of that sort, he espoused it, 
and stood by it: he “ didn’t mind.” If he broke the lash of 
his father’s gig-whip by lashing the gate, he couldn’t help it, 
— the whip shouldn’t have got caught in the hinge. If Tom 
Tulliver whipped a gate, he was convinced, not that the 
whipping of gates by all boys was a justifiable act, but that 
he, Tom Tulliver, was justifiable in whipping that particular 
gate, and he wasn’t going to be sorry. But Maggie, as she 
stood crying before the glass, felt it impossible that she 
should go down to dinner and endure the severe eyes and 
severe words of her aunts, while Tom and Lucy, and Martha, 
who waited at table, and perhaps her father and her uncles, 
would laugh at her; for if Tom had laughed at her, of course 
every one else would; and if she had only let her hair alone, 
she could have sat with Tom and Lucy, and had the apricot 
pudding and the custard! What could she do but sob? 
She sat as helpless and despairing among her black locks as 
Ajax among the slaughtered sheep. Very trivial, perhaps, 
this anguish seems to weather-worn mortals who have to 
think of Christmas bills, dead loves, and broken friendships; 
but it was not less bitter to Maggie — perhaps it was even 
more bitter — than what we are fond of calling antitheti¬ 
cally the real troubles of mature life. “ Ah, my child, you 
will have real troubles to fret about by and by,” is the con¬ 
solation we have almost all of us had administered to us in 
our childhood, and have repeated to other children since we 
have been grown up. We have all of us sobbed so piteously, 
standing with tiny bare legs above our little socks, when we 
lost sight of our mother or nurse in some strange place; but 
we can no longer recall the poignancy of that moment and 
weep over it, as we do over the remembered sufferings of five 
or ten years ago. Every one of those keen moments has left 
its trace, and lives in us still, but such traces have blent 
themselves irrecoverably with the firmer texture of our 
youth and manhood; and so it comes that we can look on 
at the troubles of our children with a smiling disbelief in the 


68 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


reality of their pain. Is there any one who can recover the 
experience of his childhood, not merely with a memory of 
what he did and what happened to him, of what he liked and 
disliked when he was in frock and trousers, but with an inti¬ 
mate penetration, a revived consciousness of what he felt 
then, when it was so long from one Midsummer to another; 
what he felt when his schoolfellows shut him out of their 
game because he would pitch the ball wrong out of mere 
wilfulness; or on a rainy day in the holidays, when he didn’t 
know how to amuse himself, and fell from idleness into mis¬ 
chief, from mischief into defiance, and from defiance into 
sulkiness; or when his mother absolutely refused to let him 
have a tailed coat that “ half,” although every other boy of 
his age had gone into tails already? Surely if we could re¬ 
call that early bitterness, and the dim guesses, the strangely 
perspectiveless conception of life that gave the bitterness 
its intensity, we should not pooh-pooh the griefs of our 
children. 

“ Miss Maggie, you’re to come down this minute,” said 
Kezia, entering the room hurriedly. “ Lawks! what have 
you been a-doing? I niver see such a fright! ” 

“Don’t, Kezia,” said Maggie, angrily. “Go away! ” 

“ But I tell you you’re to come down, Miss, this minute; 
your mother says so,” said Kezia, going up to Maggie and 
taking her by the hand to raise her from the floor. 

“ Get away, Kezia; I don’t want any dinner,” said 
Maggie, resisting Kezia’s arm. “ I sha’n’t come.” 

“ Oh, well, I can’t stay. I’ve got to wait at dinner,” said 
Kezia, going out again. 

“Maggie, you little silly,” said Tom, peeping into the 
room ten minutes after, “ why don’t you come and have 
your dinner? There’s lots o’ goodies, and mother says you’re 
to come. What are you crying for, you little spooney ? ” 

Oh, it was dreadful! Tom was so hard and unconcerned; 
if he had been crying on the floor, Maggie would have cried 
too. And there was the dinner, so nice; and she was so 
hungry. It was very bitter. 

But Tom was not altogether hard. He was not inclined 


BOY AND GIRL 


69 


to cry, and did not feel that Maggie’s grief spoiled his pros¬ 
pect of the sweets; but he went and put his head near her, 
and said in a lower, comfpfting tone, — 

“ Won’t you come, then, 'Magsie? Shall I bring you a bit 
o’ pudding when I’ve had mine, and a custard and things? ” 

“ Ye-e-es,” said Maggie, beginning to feel life a little more 
tolerable. 

“ Very well,” said Tom, going away. But he turned again 
at the door and said, “ But you’d better come, you know. 
There’s the dessert, — nuts, you know, and cowslip wine.” 

Maggie’s tears had ceased, and she looked reflective as 
Tom left her. His good nature had taken off the keenest 
edge of her suffering, and nuts with cowslip wine began to 
assert their legitimate influence. 

Slowly she rose from amongst her scattered locks, and 
slowly she made her way downstairs. Then she stood lean¬ 
ing with one shoulder against the frame of the dining-parlor 
door, peeping in when it was ajar. She saw Tom and Lucy 
with an empty chair between them, and there were the 
custards on a side-table; it was too much. She slipped 
in and went toward the empty chair. But she had no 
sooner sat down than she repented and wished herself back 
again. 

Mrs. Tulliver gave a little scream as she saw her, and felt 
such a “ turn ” that she dropped the large gravy-spoon into 
the dish, with the most serious results to the table-cloth. 
For Kezia had not betrayed the reason of Maggie’s refusal 
to come down, not liking to give her mistress a shock in the 
moment of carving, and Mrs. Tulliver thought there was 
nothing worse in question than a fit of perverseness, which 
was inflicting its own punishment by depriving Maggie of 
half her dinner. 

Mrs. Tulliver’s scream made all eyes turn toward the 
same point as her own, and Maggie’s cheeks and ears began 
to burn, while uncle Glegg, a kind-looking, white-haired old 
gentleman, said, — 

“ Heyday! what little gell’s this ? Why, I don’t know her. 
Is it some little gell you’ve picked up in the road, Kezia? ” 


70 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


“ Why, she’s gone and cut her hair herself,” said Mr. Tul- 
liver in an undertone to Mr. Deane, laughing with much en¬ 
joyment. “ Did you ever know such a little hussy as it is? ” 

“ Why, little miss, you’ve made yourself look very funny,” 
said uncle Pullet, and perhaps he never in his life made an 
observation which was felt to be so lacerating. 

“ Fie, for shame! ” said aunt Glegg, in her loudest, sever¬ 
est tone of reproof. “ Little gells as cut their own hair 
should be whipped and fed on bread and water, — not come 
and sit down with their aunts and uncles.” 

“ Ay, ay,” said uncle Glegg, meaning to give a playful turn 
to this denunciation, “ she must be sent to jail, I think, and 
they’ll cut the rest of her hair off there, and make it all 
even.” 

“ She’s more like a gypsy nor ever,” said aunt Pullet, in a 
pitying tone; “ it’s very bad luck, sister, as the gell should 
be so brown; the boy’s fair enough. I doubt it’ll stand in 
her way i’ life to be so brown.” 

“ She’s a naughty child, as’ll break her mother’s heart,” 
said Mrs. Tulliver, with the tears in her eyes. 

Maggie seemed to be listening to a chorus of reproach and 
derision. Her first flush came from anger, which gave her a 
transient power of defiance, and Tom thought she was brav¬ 
ing it out, supported by the recent appearance of the pud¬ 
ding and custard. Under this impression, he whispered, 
“ Oh, my! Maggie, I told you you’d catch it.” He meant 
to be friendly, but Maggie felt convinced that Tom was re¬ 
joicing in her ignominy. Her feeble power of defiance left 
her in an instant, her heart swelled, and getting up from her 
chair, she ran to her father, hid her face on his shoulder, and 
burst out into loud sobbing. 

“ Come, come, my wench,” said her father, soothingly, 
putting his arm round her, “ never mind; you was i’ the 
right to cut it off if it plagued you; give over crying; 
father’ll take your part.” 

Delicious words of tenderness! Maggie never forgot any 
of these moments when her father “took her part”; she 
kept them in her heart, and thought of them long years 


BOY AND GIRL 71 

after, when every one else said that her father had done 
very ill by his children. 

“ How your husband does spoil that child, Bessy! ” said 
Mrs. Glegg, in a loud “ aside/’ to Mrs. Tulliver. “ It’ll be 
the ruin of her, if you don’t take care. My father never 
brought his children up so, else we should ha’ been a differ¬ 
ent sort o’ family to what we are.” 

Mrs. Tulliver’s domestic sorrows seemed at this moment 
to have reached the point at which insensibility begins. She 
took no notice of her sister’s remark, but threw back her 
capstrings and dispensed the pudding, in mute resignation. 

With the dessert there came entire deliverance for Maggie, 
for the children were told they might have their nuts and 
wine in the summer-house, since the day was so mild; and 
they scampered out among the budding bushes of the gar¬ 
den with the alacrity of small animals getting from under a 
burning-glass. 

Mrs. Tulliver had her special reason for this permission: 
now the dinner was despatched, and every one’s mind dis¬ 
engaged, it was the right moment to communicate Mr. Tul¬ 
liver’s intention concerning Tom, and it would be as well for 
Tom himself to be absent. The children were used to hear 
themselves talked of as freely as if they were birds, and could 
understand nothing, however they might stretch their necks 
and listen; but on this occasion Mrs. Tulliver manifested an 
unusual discretion, because she had recently had evidence 
that the going to school to a clergyman was a sore point with 
Tom, who looked at it as very much on a par with going to 
school to a constable. Mrs. Tulliver had a sighing sense that 
her husband would do as he liked, whatever sister Glegg 
said, or sister Pullet either; but at least they would not be 
able to say, if the thing turned out ill, that Bessy had fallen 
in with her husband’s folly without letting her own friends 
know a word about it. 

“ Mr. Tulliver,” she said, interrupting her husband in his 
talk with Mr. Deane, “ it’s time now to tell the children’s 
aunts and uncles what you’re thinking of doing with Tom, 
isn’t it ? ” 


72 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


“ Very well,” said Mr. Tulliver, rather sharply, “ I’ve no 
objections to tell anybody what I mean to do with him. IVe 
settled,” he added, looking toward Mr. Glegg and Mr. 
Deane, — “ I’ve settled to send him to a Mr. Stelling, a par¬ 
son, down at King’s Lorton, there, — an uncommon clever 
fellow, I understand, as’ll put him up to most things.” 

There was a rustling demonstration of surprise in the com¬ 
pany, such as you may have observed in a country congre¬ 
gation when they hear an allusion to their week-day affairs 
from the pulpit. It was equally astonishing to the aunts and 
uncles to find a parson introduced into Mr. Tulliver’s family 
arrangements. As for uncle Pullet, he could hardly have 
been more thoroughly obfuscated if Mr. Tulliver had said 
that he was going to send Tom to the Lord Chancellor; for 
uncle Pullet belonged to that extinct class of British yeomen 
who, dressed in good broadcloth, paid high rates and taxes, 
went to church, and ate a particularly good dinner on Sun¬ 
day, without dreaming that the British constitution in 
Church and State had a traceable origin any more than the 
solar system and the fixed stars. It is melancholy, but true, 
that Mr. Pullet had the most confused idea of a bishop as 
a sort of a baronet, who might or might not be a clergyman; 
and as the rector of his own parish was a man of high fam¬ 
ily and fortune, the idea that a clergyman could be a school¬ 
master was too remote from Mr. Pullet’s experience to be 
readily conceivable. I know it is difficult for people in these 
instructed times to believe in uncle Pullet’s ignorance; but 
let them reflect on the remarkable results of a great natural 
faculty under favoring circumstances. And uncle Pullet had 
a great natural faculty for ignorance. He was the first to 
give utterance to his astonishment. 

“ Why, what can you be going to send him to a parson 
for? ” he said, with an amazed twinkling in his eyes, looking 
at Mr. Glegg and Mr. Deane, to see if they showed any signs 
of comprehension. 

“ Why, because the parsons are the best schoolmasters, by 
what I can make out,” said poor Mr. Tulliver, who, in the 
maze of this puzzling world, laid hold of any clew with great 


BOY AND GIRL 


73 


readiness and tenacity. “ Jacobs at th’ academy’s no par¬ 
son, and he’s done very bad by the boy; and I made up my 
mind, if I sent him to school again, it should be to somebody 
different to Jacobs. And this Mr. Stelling, by what I can 
make out, is the sort o’ man I want. And I mean my boy 
to go to him at Midsummer,” he concluded, in a tone of de¬ 
cision, tapping his snuff-box and taking a pinch. 

“ You’ll have to pay a swinging half-yearly bill, then, eh, 
Tulliver? The clergymen have highish notions, in general,” 
said Mr. Deane, taking snuff' vigorously, as he always did 
when wishing to maintain a neutral position. 

“ What! do you think the parson’ll teach him to know a 
good sample o’ wheat when he sees it, neighbor Tulliver? ” 
said Mr. Glegg, who was fond of his jest, and having retired 
from business, felt that it was not only allowable but becom¬ 
ing in him to take a playful view of things. 

“ Why, you see, I’ve got a plan i’ my head about Tom,” 
said Mr. Tulliver, pausing after that statement and lifting 
up his glass. 

“ Well, if I may be allowed to speak, and it’s seldom as I 
am,” said Mrs. Glegg, with a tone of bitter meaning, “ I 
should like to know what good is to come to the boy by 
bringin’ him up above his fortin.” 

“ Why,” said Mr. Tulliver, not looking at Mrs. Glegg, but 
at the male part of his audience, “ you see, I’ve made up my 
mind not to bring Tom up to my own business. I’ve had 
my thoughts about it all along, and I made up my mind by 
what I saw with Garnett and his son. I mean to put him to 
some business as he can go into without capital, and I want 
to give him an eddication as he’ll be even wi’ the lawyers 
and folks, and put me up to a notion now an’ then.” 

Mrs. Glegg emitted a long sort of guttural sound with 
closed lips, that smiled in mingled pity and scorn. 

“ It ’ud be a fine deal better for some people,” she said, 
after that introductory note, “if they’d let the lawyers 
alone.” 

“Is he at the head of a grammar school, then, this clergy¬ 
man, such as that at Market Bewley ? ” said Mr. Deane. 


74 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


“No, nothing o’ that,” said Mr. Tulliver. “He won’t 
take more than two or three pupils, and so he’ll have the 
more time to attend to ’em, you know.” 

“ Ah, and get his eddication done the sooner; they can’t 
learn much at a time when there’s so many of ’em,” said 
uncle Pullet, feeling that he was getting quite an insight 
into this difficult matter. 

“ But he’ll want the more pay, I doubt,” said Mr. Glegg. 

“ Ay, ay, a cool hundred a year, that’s all,” said Mr. Tul¬ 
liver, with some pride at his own spirited course. “ But 
then, you know, it’s an investment; Tom’s eddication ’ull be 
so much capital to him.” 

“ Ay, there’s something in that,” said Mr. Glegg. “ Well, 
well, neighbor Tulliver, you may be right, you may be right: 

‘ When land is gone and money’s spent, 

Then learning is most excellent.’ 

I remember seeing those two lines wrote on a window at 
Buxton. But us that have got no learning had better keep 
our money, eh, neighbor Pullet?” Mr. Glegg rubbed his 
knees, and looked very pleasant. 

“ Mr. Glegg, I wonder at you,” said his wife. “ It’s very 
unbecoming in a man o’ your age and belongings.” 

“ What’s unbecoming, Mrs. G.? ” said Mr. Glegg, winking 
pleasantly at the company. “ My new blue coat as I’ve 
got on? ” 

“ I pity your weakness, Mr. Glegg. I say it’s unbecom¬ 
ing to be making a joke when you see your own kin going 
headlongs to ruin.” 

“ If you mean me by that,” said Mr. Tulliver, consider¬ 
ably nettled, “ you needn’t trouble yourself to fret about me. 
I can manage my own affairs without troubling other 
folks.” 

“Bless me! ” said Mr. Deane, judiciously introducing a 
new idea, “ why, now I come to think of it, somebody said 
Wakem was going to send his son — the deformed lad — to 
a clergyman, didn’t they, Susan? ” (appealing to his wife). 

“ I can give no account of it, I’m sure,” said Mrs. Deane, 


BOY AND GIRL 75 

closing her lips very tightly again. Mrs. Deane was not a 
woman to take part in a scene where missiles were flying. 

“ Well/’ said Mr. Tulliver, speaking all the more cheer¬ 
fully, that Mrs. Glegg might see he didn’t mind her, “ if 
Wakem thinks o’ sending his son to a clergyman, depend on 
it I shall make no mistake i’ sending Tom to one. Wakem’s 
as big a scoundrel as Old Harry ever made, but he knows the 
length of every man’s foot he’s got to deal with. Ay, ay, tell 
me who’s Wakem’s butcher, and I’ll tell you where to get 
your meat.” 

“ But lawyer Wakem’s son’s got a hump-back,” said Mrs. 
Pullet, who felt as if the whole business had a funereal as¬ 
pect ; “ it’s more nat’ral to send him to a clergyman.” 

“ Yes,” said Mr. Glegg, interpreting Mrs. Pullet’s obser¬ 
vation with erroneous plausibility, “ you must consider that, 
neighbor Tulliver; Wakem’s son isn’t likely to follow any 
business. Wakem ’ull make a gentleman of him, poor 
fellow.” 

“ Mr. Glegg,” said Mrs. G., in a tone which implied that 
her indignation would fizz and ooze a little, though she was 
determined to keep it corked up, “ you’d far better hold 
your tongue. Mr. Tulliver doesn’t want to know your opin¬ 
ion nor mine neither. There’s folks in the world as know 
better than everybody else.” 

“ W T hy, I should think that’s you, if we’re to trust your 
own tale,” said Mr. Tulliver, beginning to boil up again. 

“ Oh, I say nothing,” said Mrs. Glegg, sarcastically. “ My 
advice has never been asked, and I don’t give it.” 

“ It’ll be the first time, then,” said Mr. Tulliver. “ It’s 
4 the only thing you’re over-ready at giving.” 

“ I’ve been over-ready at lending, then, if I haven’t been 
over-ready at giving,” said Mrs. Glegg. “ There’s folks I’ve 
lent money to, as perhaps I shall repent o’ lending money 
to kin.” 

“ Come, come, come,” said Mr. Glegg, soothingly. But 
Mr. Tulliver was not to be hindered of his retort. 

“ You’ve got a bond for it, I reckon,” he said; “ and you’ve 
had your five per cent, kin or no kin.” 


76 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


“ Sister,” said Mrs. Tulliver, pleadingly, “ drink your 
wine, and let me give you some almonds and raisins.” 

“ Bessy, I’m sorry for you,” said Mrs. Glegg, very much 
with the feeling of a cur that seizes the opportunity of di¬ 
verting his bark toward the man who carries no stick. “ It’s 
poor work talking o’ almonds and raisins.” 

“ Lors, sister Glegg, don’t be so quarrelsome,” said Mrs. 
Pullet, beginning to cry a little. “ You may be struck 
with a fit, getting so red in the face after pinner, and 
we are but just out o’ mourning, all of us, — and all wi’ 
gowns craped alike and just put by; it’s very bad among 
sisters.” 

“ I should think it is bad,” said Mrs. Glegg. “ Things are 
come to a fine pass when one sister invites the other to her 
house o’ purpose to quarrel with her and abuse her.” 

“ Softly, softly, Jane; be reasonable, be reasonable,” said 
Mr. Glegg. 

But while he was speaking, Mr. Tulliver, who had by no 
means said enough to satisfy his anger, burst out again. 

“ Who wants to quarrel with you? ” he said. “ It’s you as 
can’t let people alone, but must be gnawing at ’em forever. 
I should never want to quarrel with any woman if she kept 
her place.” 

“My place, indeed!” said Mrs. Glegg, getting rather 
more shrill. “ There’s your betters, Mr. Tulliver, as are dead 
and in their grave, treated me with a different sort o’ respect 
to what you do; though I’ve got a husband as’ll sit by and 
see me abused by them as ’ud never ha’ had the chance if 
there hadn’t been them in our family as married worse than 
they might ha’ done.” 

“ If you talk o’ that,” said Mr. Tulliver, “ my family’s as 
good as yours, and better, for it hasn’t got a .damned ill- 
tempered woman in it! ” 

“ Well,” said Mrs. Glegg, rising from her chair, “ I don’t 
know whether you think it’s a fine thing to sit by and hear 
me swore at, Mr. Glegg; but I’m not going to stay a minute 
longer in this house. You can stay behind, and come home 
with the gig, and I’ll walk home.” 


BOY AND GIRL 77 

“Dear heart, dear heart! ” said Mr. Glegg in a melan¬ 
choly tone, as he followed his wife out of the room. 

“ Mr. Tulliver, how could you talk so ? ” said Mrs. Tulli- 
ver, with the tears in her eyes. 

“ Let her go,” said Mr. Tulliver, too hot to be damped by 
any amount of tears. “ Let her go, and the sooner the bet¬ 
ter; she won’t be trying to domineer over me again in a 
hurry.” 

“ Sister Pullet,” said Mrs. Tulliver helplessly, “ do you 
think it ’ud be any use for you to go after her and try to 
pacify her? ” 

“ Better not, better not,” said Mr. Deane. “ You’ll make 
it up another day.” 

“ Then, sisters, shall we go and look at the children ? ” 
said Mrs. Tulliver, drying her eyes. 

No proposition could have been more seasonable. Mr. 
Tulliver felt very much as if the air had been cleared of ob¬ 
trusive flies now the women were out of the room. There 
were few things he liked better than a chat with Mr. Deane, 
whose close application to business allowed the pleasure 
very rarely. Mr. Deane, he considered, was the “ knowing- 
est ” man of his acquaintance, and he had besides a ready 
causticity of tongue that made an agreeable supplement to 
Mr. Tulliver’s own tendency that way, which had remained 
in rather an inarticulate condition. And now the women 
were gone, they could carry on their serious talk without 
frivolous interruption. 


CHAPTER VIII 

MR. TULLIVER SHOWS HIS WEAKER SIDE 

S UPPOSE sister Glegg should call her money in; it ’ud be 
very awkward for you to have to raise five hundred 
pounds now,” said Mrs. Tulliver to her husband that eve¬ 
ning, as she took a plaintive review of the day. 


78 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


Mrs. Tulliver had lived thirteen years with her husband, 
yet she retained in all the freshness of her early married 
life a facility of saying things which drove him in the oppo¬ 
site direction to the one she desired. Some minds are won¬ 
derful for keeping their bloom in this way, as a patriarchal 
goldfish apparently retains to the last its youthful illusion 
that it can swim in a straight line beyond the encircling 
glass. Mrs. Tulliver was an amiable fish of this kind, and 
after running her head against the same resisting medium 
for thirteen years would go at it again to-day with undulled 
alacrity. 

This observation of hers tended directly to convince Mr. 
Tulliver that it would not be at all awkward for him to raise 
five hundred pounds; and when Mrs. Tulliver became rather 
pressing to know how he would raise it without mortgaging 
the mill and the house which he had said he never would 
mortgage, since nowadays people were none so ready to lend 
money without security, Mr. Tulliver, getting warm, de¬ 
clared that Mrs. Glegg might do as she liked about calling 
in her money, he should pay it in whether or not. He was 
not going to be beholden to his wife’s sisters. When a man 
had married into a family where there was a whole litter of 
women, he might have plenty to put up with if he chose. 
But Mr. Tulliver did not choose. 

Mrs. Tulliver cried a little in a trickling, quiet way as she 
put on her nightcap; but presently sank into a comfortable 
sleep, lulled by the thought that she would talk everything 
over with her sister Pullet to-morrow, when she was to take 
the children to Garum Firs to tea. Not that she looked for¬ 
ward to any distinct issue from that talk; but it seemed im¬ 
possible that past events should be so obstinate as to remain 
unmodified when they were complained against. 

Her husband lay awake rather longer, for he too was 
thinking of a visit he would pay on the morrow; and his 
ideas on the subject were not of so vague and soothing a 
kind as those of his amiable partner. 

Mr. Tulliver, when under the influence of a strong feeling, 
had a promptitude in action that may seem inconsistent with 


BOY AND GIRL 


79 


that painful sense of the complicated, puzzling nature of 
human affairs under which his more dispassionate delibera¬ 
tions were conducted; but it is really not improbable that 
there was a direct relation between these apparently con¬ 
tradictory phenomena, since I have observed that for get¬ 
ting a strong impression that a skein is tangled there is 
nothing like snatching hastily at a single thread. It was 
owing to this promptitude that Mr. Tulliver was on horse¬ 
back soon after dinner the next day (he was not dyspeptic) 
on his way to Basset to see his sister Moss and her husband. 
For having made up his mind irrevocably that he would 
pay Mrs. Glegg her loan of five hundred pounds, it natu¬ 
rally occurred to him that he had a promissory note for 
three hundred pounds lent to his brother-in-law Moss; and 
if the said brother-in-law could manage to pay in the money 
within a given time, it would go far to lessen the fallacious 
air of inconvenience which Mr. Tulliver’s spirited step 
might have worn in the eyes of weak people who require to 
know precisely how a thing is to be done before they are 
strongly confident that it will be easy. 

For Mr. Tulliver was in a position neither new nor strik¬ 
ing, but, like other every-day things, sure to have a cumu¬ 
lative effect that will be felt in the long run: he was held to 
be a much more substantial man than he really was. And 
as we are all apt to believe what the world believes about us, 
it was his habit to think of failure and ruin with the same 
sort of remote pity with which a spare, long-necked man 
hears that his plethoric short-necked neighbor is stricken 
with apoplexy. He had been always used to hear pleasant 
jokes about his advantages as a man who worked his own 
mill, and owned a pretty bit of land; and these jokes natu¬ 
rally kept up his sense that he was a man of considerable 
substance. They gave a pleasant flavor to his glass on a 
market-day, and if it had not been for the recurrence of 
half-yearly payments, Mr. Tulliver would really have for¬ 
gotten that there was a mortgage of two thousand pounds 
on his very desirable freehold. That was not altogether his 
own fault, since one of the thousand pounds was his sister’s 


80 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


fortune, which he had to pay on her marriage; and a man 
who has neighbors that will go to law with him is not likely 
to pay off his mortgages, especially if he enjoys the good 
opinion of acquaintances who want to borrow a hundred 
pounds on security too lofty to be represented by parch¬ 
ment. Our friend Mr. Tulliver had a good-natured fibre 
in him, and did not like to give harsh refusals even to his 
sister, who had not only come into the world in that super¬ 
fluous way characteristic of sisters, creating a necessity for 
mortgages, but had quite thrown herself away in marriage, 
and had crowned her mistakes by having an eighth baby. 
On this point Mr. Tulliver was conscious of being a little 
weak; but he apologized to himself by saying that poor 
Gritty had been a good-looking wench before she married 
Moss; he would sometimes say this even with a slight tremu¬ 
lousness in his voice. But this morning he was in a mood 
more becoming a man of business, and in the course of his 
ride along the Basset lanes, with their deep ruts, — lying so 
far away from a market-town that the labor of drawing 
produce and manure was enough to take away the best 
part of the profits on such poor land as that parish was 
made of, — he got up a due amount of irritation against 
Moss as a man without capital, who, if murrain and blight 
were abroad, was sure to have his share of them, and who, the 
more you tried to help him out of the mud, would sink the 
further in. It would do him good rather than harm, now, if 
he were obliged to raise this three hundred pounds; it would 
make him look about him better, and not act so foolishly 
about his wool this year as he did the last; in fact, Mr. 
Tulliver had been too easy with his brother-in-law, and be¬ 
cause he had let the interest run on for two years, Moss was 
likely enough to think that he should never be troubled 
about the principal. But Mr. Tulliver was determined not 
to encourage such shuffling people any longer; and a ride 
along the Basset lanes was not likely to enervate a man’s 
resolution by softening his temper. The deep-trodden hoof- 
marks, made in the muddiest days of winter, gave him a 
shake now and then which suggested a rash but stimulating 


BOY AND GIRL 


81 


snarl at the father of lawyers, who, whether by means of 
his hoof or otherwise, had doubtless something to do with 
this state of the roads; and the abundance of foul land and 
neglected fences that met his eye, though they made no part 
of his brother Moss’s farm, strongly contributed to his dis¬ 
satisfaction with that unlucky agriculturist. If this wasn’t 
Moss’s fallow, it might have been; Basset was all alike; it 
was a beggarly parish, in Mr. Tulliver’s opinion, and his 
opinion was certainly not groundless. Basset had a poor 
soil, poor roads, a poor non-resident landlord, a poor non¬ 
resident vicar, and rather less than half a curate, also poor. 
If any one strongly impressed with the power of the human 
mind to triumph over circumstances will contend that the 
parishioners of Basset might nevertheless have been a very 
superior class of people, I have nothing to urge against that 
abstract proposition.; I only know that, in point of fact, the 
Basset mind was in strict keeping with its circumstances. 
The muddy lanes, green or clayey, that seemed to the un¬ 
accustomed eye to lead nowhere but into each other, did 
really lead, with patience, to a distant high-road; but there 
were many feet in Basset which they led more frequently 
to a centre of dissipation, spoken of formerly as the “ Markis 
o’ Granby,” but among intimates as “ Dickison’s.” A large 
low room with a sanded floor; a cold scent of tobacco, modi¬ 
fied by undetected beer-dregs; Mr. Dickison leaning against 
the door-post with a melancholy pimpled face, looking as 
irrelevant to the daylight as a last night’s guttered candle, 
— all this may not seem a very seductive form of tempta¬ 
tion; but the majority of men in Basset found it fatally 
alluring when encountered on their road toward four o’clock 
on a wintry afternoon; and if any wife in Basset wished to 
indicate that her husband was not a pleasure-seeking man, 
she could hardly do it more emphatically than by saying 
that he didn’t spend a shilling at Dickison’s from one Whit¬ 
suntide to another. Mrs. Moss had said so of her husband 
more than once, when her brother was in a mood to find 
fault with him, as he certainly was to-day. And nothing 
could be less pacifying to Mr. Tulliver than the behavior of 


82 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


the farmyard gate, which he no sooner attempted to push 
open with his riding-stick than it acted as gates without the 
upper hinge are known to do, to the peril of shins, whether 
equine or human. He was about to get down and lead his 
horse through the damp dirt of the hollow farmyard, shad¬ 
owed drearily by the large half-timbered buildings, up to 
the long line of tumble-down dwelling-houses standing on a 
raised causeway; but the timely appearance of a cowboy 
saved him that frustration of a plan he had determined on, 
— namely, not to get down from his horse during this visit. 
If a man means to be hard, let him keep in his saddle and 
speak from that height, above the level of pleading eyes, 
and with the command of a distant horizon. Mrs. Moss 
heard the sound of the horse’s feet, and, when her brother 
rode up, was already outside the kitchen door, with a half- 
weary smile on her face, and a black-eyed baby in her arms. 
Mrs. Moss’s face bore a faded resemblance to her brother’s; 
baby’s little fat hand, pressed against her cheek, seemed to 
show more strikingly that the cheek was faded. 

“ Brother, I’m glad to see you,” she said, in an affectionate 
tone. “ I didn’t look for you to-day. How do you do? ” 

“ Oh, pretty well, Mrs. Moss, pretty well,” answered the 
brother, with cool deliberation, as if it were rather too for¬ 
ward of her to ask that question. She knew at once that her 
brother was not in a good humor; he never called her Mrs. 
Moss except when he was angry, and when they were in 
company. But she thought it was in the order of nature 
that people who were poorly off should be snubbed. Mrs. 
Moss did not take her stand on the equality of the human 
race; she was a patient, prolific, loving-hearted woman. 

“ Your husband isn’t in the house, I suppose? ” added 
Mr. Tulliver after a grave pause, during which four children 
had run out, like chickens whose mother has been suddenly 
in eclipse behind the hen-coop. 

“ No,” said Mrs. Moss, “ but he’s only in the potato-field 
yonders. Georgy, run to the Far Glose in a minute, and 
tell father your uncle’s come. You’ll get down, brother, 
won’t you, and take something? ” 


BOY AND GIRL 83 

“ No, no; I can’t get down. I must be going home again 
directly,” said Mr. Tulliver, looking at the distance. 

“ And how’s Mrs. Tulliver and the children? ” said Mrs. 
Moss, humbly, not daring to press the invitation. 

“ Oh, pretty well. Tom’s going to a new school at Mid¬ 
summer, — a deal of expense to me. It’s bad work for me, 
lying out o’ my money.” 

“ I wish you’d be so good as let the children come and see 
their cousins some day. My little uns want to see their 
cousin Maggie so as never was. And me her godmother, and 
so fond of her; there’s nobody ’ud make a bigger fuss with 
her, according to what they’ve got. And I know she likes 
to come, for she’s a loving child, and how quick and clever 
she is, to be sure! ” 

If Mrs. Moss had been one of the most astute women in 
the w’orld, instead of being one of the simplest, she could 
have thought of nothing more likely to propitiate her brother 
than this praise of Maggie. He seldom found any one vol¬ 
unteering praise of “the little wench”; it was usually left 
entirely to himself to insist on her merits. But Maggie al¬ 
ways appeared in the most amiable light at her aunt Moss’s; 
it was her Alsatia, where she was out of the reach of law, — 
if she upset anything, dirtied her shoes, or tore her frock, 
these things were matters of course at her aunt Moss’s. In 
spite of himself, Mr. Tulliver’s eyes got milder, and he did 
not look away from his sister as he said, — 

“Ay; she’s fonder o’ you than o’ the other aunts, I 
think. She takes after our family: not a bit of her mother’s 
in her.” 

“ Moss says she’s just like what I used to be,” said Mrs. 
Moss, “ though I was never so quick and fond o’ the books. 
But I think my Lizzy’s like her; she’s sharp. Come here, 
Lizzy, my dear, and let your uncle see you; he hardly knows 
you, you grow so fast.” 

Lizzy, a black-eyed child of seven, looked very shy when 
her mother drew her forward, for the small Mosses were 
much in awe of their uncle from Dorlcote Mill. She was 
inferior enough to Maggie in fire and strength of expression 


84 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


to make the resemblance between the two entirely flattering 
to Mr. Tulliver's fatherly love. 

“ Ay, they're a bit alike," he said, looking kindly at the 
little figure in the soiled pinafore. “ They both take after 
our mother. You've got enough o’ gells, Gritty," he added, 
in a tone half compassionate, half reproachful. 

“ Four of 'em, bless 'em! " said Mrs. Moss, with a sigh, 
stroking Lizzy's hair on each side of her forehead; “ as many 
as there's boys. They've got a brother apiece." 

“ Ah, but they must turn out and fend for themselves," 
said Mr. Tulliver, feeling that his severity was relaxing, and 
trying to brace it by throwing out a wholesome hint. “ They 
mustn't look to hanging on their brothers." 

“ No; but I hope their brothers 'ull love the poor things, 
and remember they came o’ one father and mother; the 
lads 'ull never be the poorer for that," said Mrs. Moss, 
flashing out with hurried timidity, like a half-smothered 
fire. 

Mr. Tulliver gave his horse a little stroke on the fla nk , 
then checked it, and said angrily, “ Stand still with you! " 
much to the astonishment of that innocent animal. 

“ And the more there is of ’em, the more they must love 
one another," Mrs. Moss went on, looking at her children 
with a didactic purpose. But she turned toward her brother 
again to say, “ Not but what I hope your boy 'ull allays be 
good to his sister, though there's but two of 'em, like you 
and me, brother." 

The arrow went straight to Mr. Tulliver’s heart. He had 
not a rapid imagination, but the thought of Maggie was very 
near to him, and he was not long in seeing his relation to his 
own sister side by side with Tom's relation to Maggie. 
Would the little wench ever be poorly off, and Tom rather 
hard upon her? 

# “ Ay, ay, Gritty," said the miller, with a new softness in 
his tone; “ but I've allays done what I could for you," he 
added, as if vindicating himself from a reproach. 

“ I’m not denying that, brother, and I’m noways ungrate¬ 
ful," said poor Mrs. Moss, too fagged by toil and children to 


BOY AND GIRL 85 

have strength left for any pride. “ But herd’s the father. 
What a while you’ve been, Moss! ” 

“While, do you call it?” said Mr. Moss, feeling out of 
breath and injured. “ I’ve been running all the way. Won’t 
you ’light, Mr. Tulliver? ” 

“ Well, I’ll just get down and have a bit o’ talk with you 
in the garden,” said Mr. Tulliver, thinking that he should 
be more likely to show a due spirit of resolve if his sister 
were not present. 

He got down, and passed with Mr. Moss into the garden, 
toward an old yew-tree arbor, while his sister stood tapping 
her baby on the back and looking wistfully after them. 

Their entrance into the yew-tree arbor surprised several 
fowls that were recreating themselves by scratching deep 
holes in the dusty ground, and at once took flight with much 
pother and cackling. Mr. Tulliver sat down on the bench, 
and tapping the ground curiously here and there with his 
stick, as if he suspected some hollowness, opened the con¬ 
versation by observing, with something like a snarl in his 
tone, — 

“ Why, you’ve got wheat again in that Corner Close, I 
see; and never a bit o’ dressing on it. You’ll do no good with 
it this year.” 

Mr. Moss, who, when he married Miss Tulliver, had been 
regarded as the buck of Basset, now wore a beard nearly a 
week old, and had the depressed, unexpectant air of a 
machine-horse. He answered in a patient-grumbling tone, 
“Why, poor farmers like me must do as they can; they 
must leave it to them as have got money to play with, to 
put half as much into the ground as they mean to get 
out of it.” 

“ I don’t know who should have money to play with, if it 
isn’t them as can borrow money without paying interest,” 
said Mr. Tulliver, who wished to get into a slight quarrel; 
it was the most natural and easy introduction to calling in 
money. 

“ I know I’m behind with the interest,” said Mr. Moss, 
“ but I was so unlucky wi’ the wool last year; and what 


86 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


with the Missis being laid up so, things have gone awk- 
’arder nor usual/' 

“ Ay," snarled Mr. Tulliver, “ there’s folks as things ’ull 
allays go awk’ard with; empty sacks ’ull never stand up¬ 
right.” 

“ Well, I don’t know what fault you’ve got to find wi’ 
me, Mr. Tulliver,” said Mr. Moss, deprecatingly; “ I know 
there isn’t a day-laborer works harder.” 

“ What’s the use o’ that,” said Mr. Tulliver, sharply, 
“ when a man marries, and’s got no capital to work his farm 
but his wife’s bit o’ fortin? I was against it from the first; 
but you’d neither of you listen to me. And I can’t lie out 
o’ my money any longer, for I’ve got to pay five hundred 
o’ Mrs. Glegg’s, and there’ll be Tom an expense to me. I 
should find myself short, even saying I’d got back all as is 
my own. You must look about and see how you can pay me 
the three hundred pound.” 

“ Well, if that’s what you mean,” said Mr. Moss, looking 
blankly before him, “ we’d better be sold up, and ha’ done 
with it; I must part wi’ every head o’ stock I’ve got, to pay 
you and the landlord too.” 

Poor relations are undeniably irritating, — their existence 
is so entirely uncalled for on our part, and they are almost 
always very faulty people. Mr. Tulliver had succeeded in 
getting quite as much irritated with Mr. Moss as he had 
desired, and he was able to say angrily, rising from his 
seat, — 

“ Well, you must do as you can. I can’t find money for 
everybody else as well as myself. I must look to my own 
business and my own family. I can’t lie out o’ my money 
any longer. You must raise it as quick as you can.” 

Mr. Tulliver walked abruptly out of the arbor as he 
uttered the last sentence, and, without looking round at Mr. 
Moss, went on to the kitchen door, where the eldest boy was 
holding his horse, and his sister was waiting in a state of 
wondering alarm, which was not without its alleviations, for 
baby was making pleasant gurgling sounds, and performing 
a great deal of finger practice on the faded face. Mrs. Moss 


BOY AND GIRL 


87 


had eight children, but could never overcome her regret that 
the twins had not lived. Mr. Moss thought their removal 
was not without its consolations. “ Won’t you come in, 
brother ? ” she said, looking anxiously at her husband, who 
was walking slowly up, while Mr. Tulliver had his foot al¬ 
ready in the stirrup. 

“ No, no; good-by,” said he, turning his horse’s head, and 
riding away. 

No man could feel more resolute till he got outside the 
yard gate, and a little way along the deep-rutted lane; but 
before he reached the next turning, which would take him 
out of sight of the dilapidated farm-buildings, he appeared 
to be smitten by some sudden thought. He checked his 
horse, and made it stand still in the same spot for two or 
three minutes, during which he turned his head from side 
to side in a melancholy way, as if he were looking at some 
painful object on more sides than one. Evidently, after his 
fit of promptitude, Mr. Tulliver was relapsing into the sense 
that this is a puzzling world. He turned his horse, and rode 
slowly back, giving vent to the climax of feeling which had 
determined this movement by saying aloud, as he struck his 
horse, “ Poor little wench! she’ll have nobody but Tom, be¬ 
like, when I’m gone.” 

Mr. Tulliver’s return into the yard was descried by sev¬ 
eral young Mosses, who immediately ran in with the excit¬ 
ing news to their mother, so that Mrs. Moss was again on the 
door-step when her brother rode up. She had been crying, 
but was rocking baby to sleep in her arms now, and made no 
ostentatious show of sorrow as her brother looked at her, but 
merely said: 

“ The father’s gone to the field again, if you want him, 
brother.” 

“ No, Gritty, no,” said Mr. Tulliver, in a gentle tone. 
“ Don’t you fret, — that’s all, — I’ll make a shift without 
the money a bit, only you must be as clever and contriving 
as you can.” 

Mrs. Moss’s tears came again at this unexpected kindness, 
and she could say nothing. 


88 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


“ Come, come! — the little wench shall come and see you. 
Ill bring her and Tom some day before he goes to school. 
You mustn’t fret. Ill allays be a good brother to you.” 

“ Thank you for that word, brother,” said Mrs. Moss, dry¬ 
ing her tears; then turning to Lizzy, she said, “ Run now, 
and fetch the colored egg for cousin Maggie.” Lizzy ran in, 
and quickly reappeared with a small paper parcel. 

“ It’s boiled hard, brother, and colored with thrums, very 
pretty; it was done o’ purpose for Maggie. Will you please 
to carry it in your pocket? ” 

“ Ay, ay,” said Mr. Tulliver, putting it carefully in his 
side pocket. “ Good-by.” 

And so the respectable miller returned along the Basset 
lanes rather more puzzled than before as to ways and means, 
but still with the sense of a danger escaped. It had come 
across his mind that if he were hard upon his sister, it might 
somehow tend to make Tom hard upon Maggie at some dis¬ 
tant day, when her father was no longer there to take her 
part; for simple people, like our friend Mr. Tulliver, are apt 
to clothe unimpeachable feelings in erroneous ideas, and this 
was his confused way of explaining to himself that his love 
and anxiety for “ the little wench ” had given him a new 
sensibility toward his sister. 


CHAPTER IX 

TO GARUM FIRS 

W HILE the possible troubles of Maggie’s future were 
occupying her father’s mind, she herself was tasting 
only the bitterness of the present. Childhood has no fore¬ 
bodings; but then, it is soothed by no memories of outlived 
sorrow. 

The fact was, the day had begun ill with Maggie. The 
pleasure of having Lucy to look at, and the prospect of the 
afternoon visit to Garum Firs, where she would hear uncle 


BOY AND GIRL 


89 


Pullet’s musical box, had been marred as early as eleven 
o’clock by the advent of the hair-dresser from St. Ogg’s, 
who had spoken in the severest terms of the condition in 
which he had found her hair, holding up one jagged lock 
after another and saying, “ See here! tut, tut, tut! ” in a 
tone of mingled disgust and pity, which to Maggie’s imagi¬ 
nation was equivalent to the strongest expression of public 
opinion. Mr. Rappit, the hair-dresser, with his well- 
anointed coronal locks tending wavily upward, like the 
simulated pyramid of flame on a monumental urn, seemed 
to her at that moment the most formidable of her contem¬ 
poraries, into whose street at St. Ogg’s she would carefully 
refrain from entering through the rest of her life. 

Moreover, the preparation for a visit being always a 
serious affair in the Dodson family, Martha was enjoined to 
have Mrs. Tulliver’s room ready an hour earlier than usual, 
that the laying out of the best clothes might not be deferred 
till the last moment, as was sometimes the case in families 
of lax views, where the ribbon-strings were never rolled 
up, where there was little or no wrapping in silver paper, 
and where the sense that the Sunday clothes could be got at 
quite easily produced no shock to the mind. Already, at 
twelve o’clock, Mrs. Tulliver had on her visiting costume, 
with a protective apparatus of brown holland, as if she had 
been a piece of satin furniture in danger of flies; Maggie 
was frowning and twisting her shoulders, that she might if 
possible shrink away from the prickliest of tuckers, while 
her mother was remonstrating, “ Don’t, Maggie, my dear; 
don’t make yourself so ugly! ” and Tom’s cheeks were look¬ 
ing particularly brilliant as a relief to his best blue suit, 
which he wore with becoming calmness, having, after a little 
wrangling, effected what was always the one point of inter¬ 
est to him in his toilet: he had transferred all the contents 
of his every-day pockets to those actually in wear. 

As for Lucy, she was just as pretty and neat as she had 
been yesterday; no accidents ever happened to her clothes, 
and she was never uncomfortable in them, so that she looked 
with wondering pity at Maggie, pouting and writhing un- 


90 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


der the exasperating tucker. Maggie would certainly have 
torn it off, if she had not been checked by the remembrance 
of her recent humiliation about her hair; as it was, she con¬ 
fined herself to fretting and twisting, and behaving peevishly 
about the card-houses which they were allowed to build till 
dinner, as a suitable amusement for boys and girls in their 
best clothes. Tom could build perfect pyramids of houses; 
but Maggie’s would never bear the laying on the roof. It 
was always so with the things that Maggie made; and Tom 
had deduced the conclusion that no girls could ever make 
anything. But it happened that Lucy proved wonderfully 
clever at building; she handled the cards so lightly, and 
moved so gently, that Tom condescended to admire her 
houses as well as his own, the more readily because she had 
asked him to teach her. Maggie, too, would have admired 
Lucy’s houses, and would have given up her own unsuccess¬ 
ful building to contemplate them, without ill temper, if her 
tucker had not made her peevish, and if Tom had not in¬ 
considerately laughed when her houses fell, and told her 
she was “ a stupid.” 

“ Don’t laugh at me, Tom! ” she burst out angrily; “ I’m 
not a stupid. I know a great many things you don’t.” 

“ Oh, I dare say, Miss Spitfire! I’d never be such a cross 
thing as you, making faces like that. Lucy doesn’t do so. 
I like Lucy better than you; I wish Lucy was my sister.” 

“ Then it’s very wicked and cruel of you to wish so,” said 
Maggie, starting up hurriedly from her place on the floor, 
and upsetting Tom’s wonderful pagoda. She really did 
not mean it, but the circumstantial evidence was against 
her, and Tom turned white with anger, but said nothing; 
he would have struck her, only he knew it was cowardly to 
strike a girl, and Tom Tulliver was quite determined he 
would never do anything cowardly. 

Maggie stood in dismay and terror, while Tom got up 
from the floor and walked away, pale, from the scattered 
ruins of his pagoda, and Lucy looked on mutely, like a 
kitten pausing from its lapping. 

“ Oh, Tom,” said Maggie, at last, going half-way toward 


BOY AND GIRL 91 

him, “ I didn’t mean to knock it down, indeed, indeed I 
didn’t.” 

Tom took no notice of her, but took, instead, two or 
three hard peas out of his pocket, and shot them with his 
thumb-nail against the window, vaguely at first, but pres¬ 
ently with the distinct aim of hitting a superannuated blue¬ 
bottle which was exposing its imbecility in the spring 
sunshine, clearly against the views of Nature, who had pro¬ 
vided Tom and the peas for the speedy destruction of this 
weak individual. 

Thus the morning had been made heavy to Maggie, and 
Tom’s persistent coldness to her all through their walk spoiled 
the fresh air and sunshine for her. He called Lucy to look 
at the half-built bird’s nest without caring to show it to 
Maggie, and peeled a willow switch for Lucy and himself, 
without offering one to Maggie. Lucy had said, “ Maggie, 
shouldn’t you like one ? ” but Tom was deaf. 

Still, the sight of the peacock opportunely spreading his 
tail on the stackyard wall, just as they reached Garum 
Firs, was enough to divert the mind temporarily from per¬ 
sonal grievances. And this was only the beginning of beauti¬ 
ful sights at Garum Firs. All the farmyard life was wonder¬ 
ful there, — bantams, speckled and topknotted; Friesland 
hens, with their feathers all turned the wrong way; Guinea- 
fowls that flew and screamed and dropped their pretty 
spotted feathers; pouter-pigeons and a tame magpie; nay, a 
goat, and a wonderful brindled dog, half mastiff, half bull¬ 
dog, as large as a lion. Then there were white railings and 
white gates all about, and glittering weathercocks of vari¬ 
ous design, and garden-walks paved with pebbles in beautiful 
patterns, — nothing was quite common at Garum Firs; and 
Tom thought that the unusual size of the toads there was 
simply due to the general unusualness which characterized 
uncle Pullet’s possessions as a gentleman farmer. Toads who 
paid rent were naturally leaner. As for the house, it was 
not less remarkable; it had a receding centre, and two wings 
with battlemented turrets, and was covered with glittering 
white stucco. 


92 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


Uncle Pullet had seen the expected party approaching 
from the window, and made haste to unbar and unchain the 
front door, kept always in this fortified condition from fear 
of tramps, who might be supposed to know of the glass 
case of stuffed birds in the hall, and to contemplate rush¬ 
ing in and carrying it away on their heads. Aunt Pullet, 
too, appeared at the doorway, and as soon as her sister 
was within hearing said, “ Stop the children, for God’s 
sake! Bessy; don’t let ’em come up the door-steps; Sally’s 
bringing the old mat and the duster, to rub their shoes.” 

Mrs. Pullet’s front-door mats were by no means intended 
to wipe shoes on; the very scraper had a deputy to do its 
dirty work. Tom rebelled particularly against this shoe¬ 
wiping, which he always considered in the light of an in¬ 
dignity to his sex. He felt it as the beginning of the dis¬ 
agreeables incident to a visit at aunt Pullet’s, where he 
had once been compelled to sit with towels wrapped round 
his boots; a fact which may serve to correct the too-hasty 
conclusion that a visit to Garum Firs must have been a 
great treat to a young gentleman fond of animals, — fond, 
that is, of throwing stones at them. 

The next disagreeable was confined to his feminine com¬ 
panions; it was the mounting of the polished oak stairs, 
which had very handsome carpets rolled up and laid by in 
a spare bedroom, so that the ascent of these glossy steps 
might have served, in barbarous times, as a trial by ordeal 
from which none but the most spotless virtue could have 
come off with unbroken limbs. Sophy’s weakness about 
these polished stairs was always a subject of bitter re¬ 
monstrance on Mrs. Glegg’s part; but Mrs. Tulliver ven¬ 
tured on no comment, only thinking to herself it was a 
mercy when she and the children were safe on the landing. 

“ Mrs. Gray has sent home my new bonnet, Bessy,” said 
Mrs. Pullet, in a pathetic tone, as Mrs. Tulliver adjusted 
her cap. 

“ Has she, sister?” said Mrs. Tulliver, with an air of 
much interest. “And how do you like it? ” 

“ It’s apt to make a mess with clothes, taking ’em out 


BOY AND GIRL 


93 


and putting ’em in again,” said Mrs. Pullet, drawing a bunch 
of keys from her pocket and looking at them earnestly, 
“ but it ’ud be a pity for you to go away without seeing it. 
There’s no knowing what may happen.” 

Mrs. Pullet shook her head slowly at this last serious 
consideration, which determined her to single out a par¬ 
ticular key. 

“ I’m afraid it’ll be troublesome to you getting it out, 
sister,” said Mrs. Tulliver; “but I should like to see what 
sort of a crown she’s made you.” 

Mrs. Pullet rose with a melancholy air and unlocked one 
wing of a very bright wardrobe, where you may have 
hastily supposed she would find the new bonnet. Not at 
all. Such a supposition could only have arisen from a too- 
superficial acquaintance with the habits of the Dodson fam¬ 
ily. In this wardrobe Mrs. Pullet was seeking something 
small enough to be hidden among layers of linen, — it was 
a door-key. 

“ You must come with me into the best room,” said Mrs. 
Pullet. 

“ May the children come too, sister? ” inquired Mrs. Tul¬ 
liver, who saw that Maggie and Lucy were looking rather 
eager. 

“ Well,” said aunt Pullet, reflectively, “ it’ll perhaps be 
safer for ’em to come; they’ll be touching something if we 
leave ’em behind.” 

So they went in procession along the bright and slippery 
corridor, dimly lighted by the semi-lunar top of the window 
which rose above the closed shutter; it was really quite 
solemn. Aunt Pullet paused and unlocked a door which 
opened on something still more solemn than the passage, — 
a darkened room, in which the outer light, entering feebly, 
showed what looked like the corpses of furniture in white 
shrouds. Everything that was not shrouded stood with its 
legs upward. Lucy laid hold of Maggie’s frock, and Maggie’s 
heart beat rapidly. 

Aunt Pullet half-opened the shutter and then unlocked 
the wardrobe, with a melancholy deliberateness which was 


94 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


quite in keeping with the funereal solemnity of the scene. 
The delicious scent of roseleaves that issued from the ward¬ 
robe made the process of taking out sheet after sheet of 
silver paper quite pleasant to assist at, though the sight 
of the bonnet at last was an anticlimax to Maggie, 
who would have preferred something more strikingly 
preternatural. But few things could have been more im¬ 
pressive to Mrs. Tulliver. She looked all round it in 
silence for some moments, and then said emphatically, 
“ Well, sister, Ill never speak against the full crowns 
again! ” 

It was a great concession, and Mrs. Pullet felt it; she felt 
something was due to it. 

“You’d like to see it on, sister?” she said sadly. “Ill 
open the shutter a bit further.” 

“ Well, if you don’t mind taking off your cap, sister,” 
said Mrs. Tulliver. 

Mrs. Pullet took off her cap, displaying the brown silk 
scalp with a jutting promontory of curls which was com¬ 
mon to the more mature and judicious women of those 
times, and placing the bonnet on her head, turned slowly 
round, like a draper’s lay-figure, that Mrs. Tulliver might 
miss no point of view. 

“ I’ve sometimes thought there’s a loop too much o’ rib¬ 
bon on this left side, sister; what do you think? ” said Mrs. 
Pullet. 

Mrs. Tulliver looked earnestly at the point indicated, and 
turned her head on one side. “ Well, I think it’s best as it 
is; if you meddled with it, sister, you might repent.” 

“ That’s true,” said aunt Pullet, taking off the bonnet 
and looking at it contemplatively. 

“ How much might she charge you for that bonnet, 
sister?” said Mrs. Tulliver, whose mind was actively en¬ 
gaged on the possibility of getting a humble imitation of 
this chef-d'oeuvre made from a piece of silk she had at 
home. 

Mrs. Pullet screwed up her mouth and shook her head, 
and then whispered, “ Pullet pays for it; he said I was to 


BOY AND GIRL 95 

have the best bonnet at Garum Church, let the next best 
be whose it would.” 

She began slowly to adjust the trimmings, in preparation 
for returning it to its place in the wardrobe, and her thoughts 
seemed to have taken a melancholy turn, for she shook 
her head. 

“ Ah,” she said at last, “ I may never wear it twice, 
sister; who knows? ” 

“ Don’t talk o’ that, sister,” answered Mrs. Tulliver. 
“ I hope you’ll have your health this summer.” 

“ Ah! but there may come a death in the family, as there 
did soon after I had my green satin bonnet. Cousin Abbott 
may go, and we can’t think o’ wearing crape less nor half 
a year for him.” 

“ That would be unlucky,” said Mrs. Tulliver, entering 
thoroughly into the possibility of an inopportune decease. 
“ There’s never so much pleasure i’ wearing a bonnet the 
second year, especially when the crowns are so chancy,— 
never two summers alike.” 

“ Ah, it’s the way i’ this world,” said Mrs. Pullet, re¬ 
turning the bonnet to the wardrobe and locking it up. She 
maintained a silence characterized by head-shaking, until 
they had all issued from the solemn chamber and were 
in her own room again. Then, beginning to cry, she 
said, “ Sister, if you should never see that bonnet again 
till I’m dead and gone, you’ll remember I showed it you 
this day.” 

Mrs. Tulliver felt that she ought to be affected, but she 
was a woman of sparse tears, stout and healthy; she couldn’t 
cry so much as her sister Pullet did, and had often felt her 
deficiency at funerals. Her effort to bring tears into her 
eyes issued in an odd contraction of her face. Maggie, look¬ 
ing on attentively, felt that there was some painful mystery 
about her aunt’s bonnet which she was considered too young 
to understand; indignantly conscious, all the while, that she 
could have understood that, as well as everything else, if 
she had been taken into confidence. 

When they went down, uncle Pullet observed, with some 


96 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


acumen, that he reckoned the missis had been showing her 
bonnet, — that was what had made them so long upstairs. 
With Tom the interval had seemed still longer, for he had 
been seated in irksome constraint on the edge of a sofa 
directly opposite his uncle Pullet, who regarded him with 
twinkling gray eyes, and occasionally addressed him as 
“ Young sir.” 

“Well, young sir, what do you learn at school? ” was a 
standing question with uncle Pullet ; whereupon Tom always 
looked sheepish, rubbed his hands across his face, and an¬ 
swered, “ I don’t know.” It was altogether so embarrassing 
to be seated tete-a-tete with uncle Pullet, that Tom could 
not even look at the prints on the walls, or the fly-cages, 
or the wonderful flower-pots; he saw nothing but his uncle’s 
gaiters. Not that Tom was in awe of his uncle’s mental 
superiority; indeed, he had made up his mind that he didn’t 
want to be a gentleman farmer, because he shouldn’t like to 
be such a thin-legged, silly fellow as his uncle Pullet, — a 
molly-coddle, in fact. A boy’s sheepishness is by no means 
a sign of overmastering reverence; and while you are mak¬ 
ing encouraging advances to him under the idea that he is 
overwhelmed by a sense of your age and wisdom, ten to one 
he is thinking you extremely queer. The only consolation 
I can suggest to you is, that the Greek boys probably 
thought the same of Aristotle. It is only when you have 
mastered a restive horse, or thrashed a drayman, or have 
got a gun in your hand, that these shy juniors feel you to 
be a truly admirable and enviable character. At least, I 
am quite sure of Tom Tulliver’s sentiments on these points. 
In very tender years, when he still wore a lace border under 
his outdoor cap, he was often observed peeping through 
the bars of a gate and making minatory gestures with his 
small forefinger while he scolded the sheep with an in¬ 
articulate burr, intended to strike terror into their aston¬ 
ished minds; indicating thus early that desire for mastery 
over the inferior animals, wild and domestic, including cock¬ 
chafers, neighbors’ dogs, and small sisters, which in all ages 
has been an attribute of so much promise for the fortunes 


BOY AND GIRL 


97 


of our race. Now, Mr. Pullet never rode anything taller 
than a low pony, and was the least predatory of men, con¬ 
sidering firearms dangerous, as apt to go off of themselves 
by nobody’s particular desire. So that Tom was not with¬ 
out strong reasons when, in confidential talk with a chum, 
he had described uncle Pullet as a nincompoop, taking 
care at the same time to observe that he was a very “ rich 
fellow.” 

The only alleviating circumstance in a tete-a-tete with 
uncle Pullet was that he kept a variety of lozenges and 
peppermint-drops about his person, and when at a loss 
for conversation, he filled up the void by proposing a 
mutual solace of this kind. 

“ Do you like peppermints, young sir ? ” required only a 
tacit answer when it was accompanied by a presentation 
of the article in question. 

The appearance of the little girls suggested to uncle 
Pullet the further solace of small sweet-cakes, of which he 
also kept a stock under lock and key for his own private 
eating on wet days; but the three children had no sooner 
got the tempting delicacy between their fingers, than aunt 
Pullet desired them to abstain from eating it till the tray 
and the plates came, since with those crisp cakes they 
would make the floor “ all over ” crumbs. Lucy didn’t 
mind that much, for the cake was so pretty, she thought it 
was rather a pity to eat it; but Tom, watching his op¬ 
portunity while the elders were talking, hastily stowed it 
in his mouth at two bites, and chewed it furtively. As for 
Maggie, becoming fascinated, as usual, by a print of Ulys¬ 
ses and Nausicaa, which uncle Pullet had bought as a 
“ pretty Scripture thing,” she presently let fall her cake, 
and in an unlucky movement crushed it beneath her foot, — 
a source of so much agitation to aunt Pullet and conscious 
disgrace to Maggie, that she began to despair of hearing 
the musical snuff-box to-day, till, after some reflection, it 
occurred to her that Lucy was in high favor enough to ven¬ 
ture on asking for a tune. So she whispered to Lucy; and 
Lucy, who always did what she was desired to do, went up 


98 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


quietly to her uncle’s knee, and blushing all over her neck 
while she fingered her necklace, said, “ Will you please play 
us a tune, uncle? ” 

Lucy thought it was by reason of some exceptional talent 
in uncle Pullet that the snuff-box played such beautiful 
tunes, and indeed the thing was viewed in that light by the 
majority of his neighbors in Garum. Mr. Pullet had bought 
the box, to begin with, and he understood winding it up, 
and knew which tune it was going to play beforehand; al¬ 
together, the possession of this unique “ piece of music ” 
was a proof that Mr. Pullet’s character was not of that en¬ 
tire nullity which might otherwise have been attributed to 
it. But uncle Pullet, when entreated to exhibit his accom¬ 
plishment, never depreciated it by a too-ready consent. 
“ We’ll see about it,” was the answer he always gave, care¬ 
fully abstaining from any sign of compliance till a suitable 
number of minutes had passed. Uncle Pullet had a pro¬ 
gramme for all great social occasions, and in this way 
fenced himself in from much painful confusion and per¬ 
plexing freedom of will. 

Perhaps the suspense did heighten Maggie’s enjoyment 
when the fairy tune began; for the first time she quite forgot 
that she had a load on her mind, that Tom was angry with 
her; and by the time “ Hush, ye pretty warbling choir,” 
had been played, her face wore that bright look of happi¬ 
ness, while she sat immovable with her hands clasped, which 
sometimes comforted her mother with the sense that Maggie 
could look pretty now and then, in spite of her brown skin. 
But when the magic music ceased, she jumped up, and 
running toward Tom, put her arm round his neck and said, 
“ Oh, Tom, isn’t it pretty ? ” 

Lest you should think it showed a revolting insensibility 
in Tom that he felt any new anger toward Maggie for this 
uncalled-for and, to him, inexplicable caress, I must tell 
you that he had his glass of cowslip wine in his hand, and 
that she jerked him so as to make him spill half of it. He 
must have been an extreme milksop not to say angrily, 
“ Look there, now! ” especially when his resentment was 


BOY AND GIRL 99 

sanctioned, as it was, by general disapprobation of Maggie’s 
behavior. 

“ Why don’t you sit still, Maggie ? ” her mother said 
peevishly. 

“ Little gells mustn’t come to see me if they behave in 
that way,” said aunt Pullet. 

“ Why, you’re too rough, little miss,” said uncle Pullet. 

Poor Maggie sat down again, with the music all chased 
out of her soul, and the seven small demons all in again. 

Mrs. Tulliver, foreseeing nothing but misbehavior while 
the children remained indoors, took an early opportunity of 
suggesting that, now they were rested after their walk, they 
might go and play out of doors; and aunt Pullet gave per¬ 
mission, only enjoining them not to go off the paved walks 
in the garden, and if they wanted to see the poultry fed, 
to view them from a distance on the horse-block; a restric¬ 
tion which had been imposed ever since Tom had been 
found guilty of running after the peacock, with an illusory 
idea that fright would make one of its feathers drop off. 

Mrs. Tulliver’s thoughts had been temporarily diverted 
from the quarrel with Mrs. Glegg by millinery and maternal 
cares, but now the great theme of the bonnet was thrown 
into perspective, and the children were out of the way, yes¬ 
terday’s anxieties recurred. 

“ It weighs on my mind so as never was,” she said, by 
way of opening the subject, “ sister Glegg’s leaving the 
house in that way. I’m sure I’d no wish t’ offend a sister.” 

“ Ah,” said aunt Pullet, “ there’s no accounting for what 
Jane ’ull do. I wouldn’t speak of it out o’ the family, if it 
wasn’t to Dr. Turnbull; but it’s my belief Jane lives too low. 
I’ve said so to Pullet often and often, and he knows it.” 

“ Why, you said so last Monday was a week, when we 
came away from drinking tea with ’em,” said Mr. Pullet, 
beginning to nurse his knee and shelter it with his pocket- 
handkerchief, as was his way when the conversation took an 
interesting turn. 

“ Very like I did,” said Mrs. Pullet, “ for you remember 
when I said things, better than I can remember myself. 


100 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


He’s got a wonderful memory, Pullet has,” she continued, 
looking pathetically at her sister. “ I should be poorly off 
if he was to have a stroke, for he always remembers when 
I’ve got to take my doctor’s stuff; and I’m taking three 
sorts now.” 

“ There’s the ‘ pills as before ’ every other night, and the 
new drops at eleven and four, and the ’fervescing mixture 
* when agreeable,’ ” rehearsed Mr. Pullet, with a punctua¬ 
tion determined by a lozenge on his tongue. 

“ Ah, perhaps it ’ud be better for sister Glegg if she’d go 
to the doctor sometimes, instead o’ chewing Turkey rhubarb 
whenever there’s anything the matter with her,” said Mrs. 
Tulliver, who naturally saw the wide subject of medicine 
chiefly in relation to Mrs. Glegg. 

“ It’s dreadful to think on,” said aunt Pullet, raising her 
hands and letting them fall again, “ people playing with 
their own insides in that way! And it’s flying i’ the face 
o’ Providence; for what are the doctors for, if we aren’t 
to call ’em in? And when folks have got the money to pay 
for a doctor, it isn’t respectable, as I’ve told Jane many a 
time. I’m ashamed of acquaintance knowing it.” 

“ Well, we’ve no call to be ashamed,” said Mr. Pullet, 
“ for Doctor Turnbull hasn’t got such another patient as 
you i’ this parish, now old Mrs. Sutton’s gone.” 

“ Pullet keeps all my physic-bottles, did you know, 
Bessy? ” said Mrs. Pullet. “ He won’t have one sold. He 
says it’s nothing but right folks should see ’em when I’m 
gone. They fill two o’ the long store-room shelves a’ready; 
but,” she added, beginning to cry a little, “ it’s well if they 
ever fill three. I may go before I’ve made up the dozen o’ 
these last sizes. The pill-boxes are in the closet in my 
room, — you’ll remember that, sister, — but there’s nothing 
to show for the boluses, if it isn’t the bills.” 

“Don’t talk o’ your going, sister,” said Mrs. Tulliver; 
“ I should have nobody to stand between me and sister 
Glegg if you was gone. And there’s nobody but you can 
get her to make it up with Mr. Tulliver, for sister Deane’s 
never o’ my side, and if she was, it’s not to be looked for 


BOY AND GIRL 101 

as she can speak like them as have got an independent 
fortin.” 

“ Well, your husband is awk’ard, you know, Bessy,” said 
Mrs. Pullet, good-naturedly ready to use her deep depres¬ 
sion on her sister’s account as well as her own. “ He’s never 
behaved quite so pretty to our family as he should do, and 
the children take after him, — the boy’s very mischievous, 
and runs away from his aunts and uncles, and the gell’s rude 
and brown. It’s your bad luck, and I’m sorry for you, 
Bessy; for you was allays my favorite sister, and we allays 
liked the same patterns.” 

“ I know Tulliver’s hasty, and says odd things,” said 
Mrs. Tulliver, wiping away one small tear from the corner 
of her eye; “ but I’m sure he’s never been the man, since he 
married me, to object to my making the friends o’ my side 
o’ the family welcome to the house.” 

“ I don’t want to make the worst of you, Bessy,” said 
Mrs. Pullet, compassionately, “ for I doubt you’ll have 
trouble enough without that; and your husband’s got that 
poor sister and her children hanging on him, — and so given 
to lawing, they say. I doubt he’ll leave you poorly off when 
he dies. Not as I’d have it said out o’ the family.” 

This view of her position was naturally far from cheering 
to Mrs. Tulliver. Her imagination was not easily acted 
on, but she could not help thinking that her case was 
a hard one, since it appeared that other people thought it 
hard. 

“ I’m sure, sister, I can’t help myself,” she said, urged by 
the fear lest her anticipated misfortunes might be held re¬ 
tributive, to take a comprehensive review of her past con¬ 
duct. “ There’s no woman strives more for her children; 
and I’m sure at scouring-time this Lady-day as I’ve had 
all the bed-hangings taken down I did as much as the two 
gells put together; and there’s this last elder-flower wine 
I’ve made — beautiful! I allays offer it along with the 
sherry, though sister Glegg will have it I’m so extravagant; 
and as for liking to have my clothes tidy, and not go a fright 
about the house, there’s nobody in the parish can say any- 


102 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


thing against me in respect o’ backbiting and making mis¬ 
chief, for I don’t wish anybody any harm; and nobody loses 
by sending me a pork-pie, for my pies are fit to show with 
the best o’ my neighbors’; and the linen’s so in order as 
if I was to die to-morrow I shouldn’t be ashamed. A woman 
can do no more nor she can.” 

“But it’s all o’ no use, you know, Bessy,” said Mrs. 
Pullet, holding her'head on one side, and fixing her eyes 
pathetically on her sister, “ if your husband makes away 
with his money. Not but what if you was sold up, and 
other folks bought your furniture, it’s a comfort to think 
as you’ve kept it well rubbed. And there’s the linen, with 
your maiden mark on, might go all over the country. It 
’ud be a sad pity for our family.” Mrs. Pulle~t shook her 
head slowly. 

“ But what can I do, sister ? ” said Mrs. Tulliver. “ Mr. 
Tulliver’s not a man to be dictated to, — not if I was to go 
to the parson and get by heart what I should tell my hus¬ 
band for the best. And I’m sure I don’t pretend to know 
anything about putting out money and all that. I could 
never see into men’s business as sister Glegg does.” 

“Well, you’re like me in that, Bessy,” said Mrs. Pullet; 
“ and I think it ’ud be a deal more becoming o’ Jane if 
she’d have that pier-glass rubbed oftener, — there was ever 
so many spots on it last week, — instead o’ dictating to 
folks as have more comings in than she ever had, and tell¬ 
ing ’em what they’ve to do with their money. But Jane 
and me were allays contrairy; she would have striped things, 
and I like spots. You like a spot, too, Bessy; we allays hung 
together i’ that.” 

“ Yes, Sophy,” said Mrs. Tulliver, “ I remember our hav¬ 
ing a blue ground with a white spot both alike, — I’ve got 
a bit in a bed-quilt now; and if you would but go and see 
sister Glegg, and persuade her to make it up with Tulliver, 
I should take it very kind of you. You was allays a good 
sister to me.” 

“ But the right thing ’ud be for Tulliver to go and make 
it up with her himself, and say he was sorry for speaking 


BOY AND GIRL 


103 


so rash. If he’s borrowed money of her, he shouldn’t be 
above that,” said Mrs. Pullet, whose partiality did not blind 
her to principles; she did not forget what was due to people 
of independent fortune. 

“ It’s no use talking o’ that,” said poor Mrs. Tulliver, 
almost peevishly. “ If I was to go down on my bare knees 
on the gravel to Tulliver, he’d never humble himself.” 

“ Well, you can’t expect me to persuade Jane to beg 
pardon,” said Mrs. Pullet. “ Her temper’s beyond every¬ 
thing; it’s well if it doesn’t carry her off her mind, though 
there never was any of our family went to a madhouse.” 

“ I’m not thinking of her begging pardon,” said Mrs. 
Tulliver. “ But if she’d just take no notice, and not call 
her money in; as it’s not so much for one sister to ask of 
another; time ’ud mend things, and Tulliver ’ud forget all 
about it, and they’d be friends again.” 

Mrs. Tulliver, you perceive, was not aware of her hus¬ 
band’s irrevocable determination to pay in the five hundred 
pounds; at least such a determination exceeded her powers 
of belief. 

“Well, Bessy,” said Mrs. Pullet, mournfully, “I don’t 
want to help you on to ruin. I won’t be behindhand i’ doing 
you a good turn, if it is to be done. And I don’t like it said 
among acquaintance as we’ve got quarrels in the family. 
I shall tell Jane that; and I don’t mind driving to Jane’s 
to-morrow, if Pullet doesn’t mind. What do you say, Mr. 
Pullet? ” 

“ I’ve no objections,” said Mr. Pullet, who was perfectly 
contented with any course the quarrel might take, so that 
Mr. Tulliver did not apply to him for money. Mr. Pullet 
was nervous about his investments, and did not see how 
a man could have any security for his money unless he 
turned it into land. 

After a little further discussion as to whether it would not 
be better for Mrs. Tulliver to accompany them on a visit 
to sister Glegg, Mrs. Pullet, observing that it was tea-time, 
turned to reach from a drawer a delicate damask napkin, 
which she pinned before her in the fashion of an apron. 


104 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


The door did, in fact, soon open, but instead of the tea- 
tray, Sally introduced an object so startling that both Mrs. 
Pullet and Mrs. Tulliver gave a scream, causing uncle Pullet 
to swallow his lozenge — for the fifth time in his life, as he 
afterward noted. 


CHAPTER X 

MAGGIE BEHAVES WORSE THAN SHE EXPECTED 

T HE startling object which thus made an epoch for 
uncle Pullet was no other than little Lucy, with one 
side of her person, from her small foot to her bonnet-crown, 
wet and discolored with mud, holding out two tiny black¬ 
ened hands, and making a very piteous face. To account for 
this unprecedented apparition in aunt Pullet’s parlor, we 
must return to the moment when the three children went to 
play out of doors, and the small demons who had taken 
possession of Maggie’s soul at an early period of the day 
had returned in all the greater force after a temporary 
absence. All the disagreeable recollections of the morning 
were thick upon her, when Tom, whose displeasure toward 
her had been considerably refreshed by her foolish trick 
of causing him to upset his cowslip wine, said, “ Here, 
Lucy, you come along with me,” and walked off to the 
area where the toads were, as if there were no Maggie in 
existence. Seeing this, Maggie lingered at a distance, look¬ 
ing like a small Medusa with her snakes cropped. Lucy 
was naturally pleased that cousin Tom was so good to her, 
and-it was very amusing to see him tickling a fat toad with 
a piece of string when the toad was safe down the area, 
with an iron grating over him. Still Lucy wished Maggie 
to enjoy the spectacle also, especially as she would doubtless 
find a name for the toad, and say what had been his past 
history; for Lucy had a delighted semi-belief in Maggie’s 
stories about the live things they came upon by accident, — 
how Mrs. Earwig had a wash at home, and one of her 


BOY AND GIRL 


105 


children had fallen into the hot copper, for which reason 
she was running so fast to fetch the doctor. Tom had a 
profound contempt for this nonsense of Maggie’s, smashing 
the earwig at once as a superfluous yet easy means of proving 
the entire unreality of such a story; but Lucy, for the life 
of her, could not help fancying there was something in it, 
and at all events thought it was very pretty make-believe. 
So now the desire to know the history of a very portly toad, 
added to her habitual affectionateness, made her run back 
to Maggie and say, “ Oh, there is such a big, funny toad, 
Maggie! Do come and see! ” 

Maggie said nothing, but turned away from her with a 
deeper frown. As long as Tom seemed to prefer Lucy to 
her, Lucy made part of his unkindness. Maggie would 
have thought a little while ago that she could never be 
cross with pretty little Lucy, any more than she could be 
cruel to a little white mouse; but then, Tom had always 
been quite indifferent to Lucy before, and it had been left 
to Maggie to pet and make much of her. As it was, she 
was actually beginning to think that she should like to 
make Lucy cry by slapping or pinching her, especially as it 
might vex Tom, whom it was of no use to slap, even if she 
dared, because he didn’t mind it. And if Lucy hadn’t been 
there, Maggie was sure he would have got friends with her 
sooner. 

Tickling a fat toad who is not highly sensitive is an 
amusement that it is possible to exhaust, and Tom by and 
by began to look round for some other mode of passing the 
time. But in so prim a garden, where they were not to go 
off the paved walks, there was not a great choice of sport. 
The only great pleasure such a restriction suggested was the 
pleasure of breaking it, and Tom began to meditate an in¬ 
surrectionary visit to the pond, about a field’s length beyond 
the garden. 

“ I say, Lucy,” he began, nodding his head up and down 
with great significance, as he coiled up his string again, 
“ what do you think I mean to do? ” 

“ What, Tom? ” said Lucy, with curiosity. 


106 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


“ I mean to go to the pond and look at the pike. You 
may go with me if you like/ 7 said the young sultan. 

“Oh, Tom, dare you?” said Lucy. “Aunt said we 
mustn’t go out of the garden.” 

“ Oh, I shall go out at the other end of the garden,” said 
Tom. “ Nobody ’ull see us. Besides, I don’t care if they 
do, — I’ll run off home.” 

“ But I couldn’t run,” said Lucy, who had never before 
been exposed to such severe temptation. 

“ Oh, never mind; they won’t be cross with you,” said 
Tom. “ You say I took you.” 

Tom walked along, and Lucy trotted by his side, timidly 
enjoying the rare treat of doing something naughty, — ex¬ 
cited also by the mention of that celebrity, the pike, about 
which she was quite uncertain whether it was a fish or a 
fowl. Maggie saw them leaving the garden, and could not 
resist the impulse to follow. Anger and jealousy can no more 
bear to lose sight of their objects than love, and that Tom 
and Lucy should do or see anything of which she was ig¬ 
norant would have been an intolerable idea to Maggie. So 
she kept a few yards behind them, unobserved by Tom, who 
was presently absorbed in watching for the pike, — a highly 
interesting monster; he was said to be so very old, so very 
large, and to have such a remarkable appetite. The pike, 
like other celebrities, did not show when he was watched 
for, but Tom caught sight of something in rapid movement 
in the water, which attracted him to-another spot on the 
brink of the pond. 

“Here, Lucy! ” he said in a loud whisper, “come here! 
take care! keep on the grass! —don’t step where the cows 
have been! ” he added, pointing to a peninsula of dry grass, 
with trodden mud on each side of it; for Tom’s contemptu¬ 
ous conception of a girl included the attribute of being unfit 
to walk in dirty places. 

Lucy came carefully as she was bidden, and bent down 
to look at what seemed a golden arrow-head darting through 
the water. It was a water-snake, Tom told her; and Lucy 
at last could see the serpentine wave of its body, very much 


BOY AND GrRL 


107 


wondering that a snake could swim. Maggie had drawn 
nearer and nearer; she must see it too, though it was bitter 
to her, like everything else, since Tom did not care about 
her seeing it. At last she was close by Lucy; and Tom, 
who had been aware of her approach, but would not notice 
it till he was obliged, turned round and said,— 

“ Now, get away, Maggie; there’s no room for you on the 
grass here. Nobody asked you to come.” 

There were passions at war in Maggie at that moment to 
have made a tragedy, if tragedies were made by passion 
only; but the utmost Maggie could do, with a fierce thrust 
of her small brown arm, was to push poor little pink-and- 
white Lucy into the cow-trodden mud. 

Then Tom could not restrain himself, and gave Maggie 
two smart slaps on the arm as he ran to pick up Lucy, who 
lay crying helplessly. Maggie retreated to the roots of a 
tree a few yards off, and looked on impenitently. Usually 
her repentance came quickly after one rash deed, but 
now Tom and Lucy had made her so miserable, she was 
glad to spoil their happiness, — glad to make everybody 
uncomfortable. Why should she be sorry? Tom was 
very slow to forgive her, however sorry she might have 
been. 

“ I shall tell mother, you know, Miss Mag,” said Tom, 
loudly and emphatically, as soon as Lucy was up and ready 
to walk away. It was not Tom’s practice to “ tell,” but 
here justice clearly demanded that Maggie should be vis¬ 
ited with the utmost punishment; not that Tom had learned 
to put his views in that abstract form; he never mentioned 
“ justice,” and had no idea that his desire to punish might be 
called by that fine name. Lucy was too entirely absorbed by 
the evil that had befallen her, — the spoiling of her pretty 
best clothes, and the discomfort of being wet and dirty, — 
to think much of the cause, which was entirely mysterious 
to her. She could never have guessed what she had done 
to make Maggie angry with her; but she felt that Maggie 
was very unkind and disagreeable, and made no mag¬ 
nanimous entreaties to Tom that he would not “ tell,” only 


108 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


running along by his side and crying piteously, while Maggie 
sat on the roots of the tree and looked after them with her 
small Medusa face. 

“ Sally,” said Tom, when they reached the kitchen door, 
and Sally looked at them in speechless amaze, with a piece 
of bread-and-butter in her mouth and a toasting-fork in her 
hand, — “ Sally, tell mother it was Maggie pushed Lucy into 
the mud.” 

“ But Lors ha’ massy, how did you get near such mud 
as that?” said Sally, making a wry face, as she stooped 
down and examined the corpus delicti. 

Tom’s imagination had not been rapid and capacious 
enough to include this question among the foreseen con¬ 
sequences, but it was no sooner put than he foresaw whither 
it tended, and that Maggie would not be considered the 
only culprit in the case. He walked quietly away from 
the kitchen door, leaving Sally to that pleasure of guessing 
which active minds notoriously prefer to ready-made knowl¬ 
edge. 

Sally, as you are aware, lost no time in presenting Lucy 
at the parlor door, for to have so dirty an object introduced 
into the house at Garum Firs was too great a weight to be 
sustained by a single mind. 

“ Goodness gracious! ” aunt Pullet exclaimed, after pre¬ 
luding by an inarticulate scream; “ keep her at the door, 
Sally! Don’t bring her off the oil-cloth, whatever you do.” 

“ Why, she’s tumbled into some nasty mud,” said Mrs. 
Tulliver, going up to Lucy to examine into the amount of 
damage to clothes for which she felt herself responsible 
to her sister Deane. 

“ If you please, ’um, it was Miss Maggie as pushed her in,” 
said Sally; “ Master Tom’s been and said *so, and they 
must ha’ been to the pond, for it’s only there they could 
ha’ got into such dirt.” 

“ There it is, Bessy; it’s what I’ve been telling you,” said 
Mrs. Pullet, in a tone of prophetic sadness; “it’s your 
children, — there’s no knowing what they’ll come to.” 

Mrs. Tulliver was mute, feeling herself a truly wretched 


BOY AND GIRL 


109 


mother. As usual, the thought pressed upon her that people 
would think she had done something wicked to deserve 
her maternal troubles, while Mrs. Pullet began to give 
elaborate directions to Sally how to guard the premises 
from serious injury in the course of removing the dirt. 
Meantime tea was to be brought in by the cook, and the 
two naughty children were to have theirs in an ignominious 
manner in the kitchen. Mrs. Tulliver went out to speak 
to these naughty children, supposing them to be close at 
hand; but it was not until after some search that she found 
Tom leaning with rather a hardened, careless air against 
the white paling of the poultry-yard, and lowering his piece 
of string on the other side as a means of exasperating the 
turkey-cock. 

“ Tom, you naughty boy, where’s your sister? ” said Mrs. 
Tulliver, in a distressed voice. 

“ I don’t know,” said Tom; his eagerness for justice on 
Maggie had diminished since he had seen clearly that it 
could hardly be brought about without the injustice of some 
blame on his own conduct. 

“ Why, where did you leave her ? ” said the mother, look¬ 
ing round. 

“ Sitting under the tree, against the pond,” said Tom, 
apparently indifferent to everything but the string and the 
turkey-cock. 

“ Then go and fetch her in this minute, you naughty boy. 
And how could you think o’ going to the pond, and taking 
your sister where there was dirt? You know she’ll do mis¬ 
chief if there’s mischief to be done.” 

It was Mrs. Tulliver’s way, if she blamed Tom, to refer 
his misdemeanor, somehow or other, to Maggie. 

The idea of Maggie sitting alone by the pond roused an 
habitual fear in Mrs. Tulliver’s mind, and she mounted 
the horse-block to satisfy herself by a sight of that fatal 
child, while Tom walked — not very quickly — on his way 
toward her. 

“ They’re such children for the water, mine are,” she 
said aloud, without reflecting that there was no one to hear 


110 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


her; “ they’ll be brought in dead and drownded some day. I 
wish that river was far enough.” 

But when she not only failed to discern Maggie, but 
presently saw Tom returning from the pool alone, this 
hovering fear entered and took complete possession of her, 
and she hurried to meet him. 

“ Maggie’s nowhere about the pond, mother,” said Tom; 
“ she’s gone away.” 

You may conceive the terrified search for Maggie, and 
the difficulty of convincing her mother that she was not in 
the pond. Mrs. Pullet observed that the child might come 
to a worse end if she lived, there was no knowing; and Mr. 
Pullet, confused and overwhelmed by this revolutionary 
aspect of things, — the tea deferred and the poultry alarmed 
by the unusual running to and fro, — took up his spud 
as an instrument of search, and reached down a key to un¬ 
lock the goose-pen, as a likely place for Maggie to lie con¬ 
cealed in. 

Tom, after a while, started the idea that Maggie was 
gone home (without thinking it necessary to state that it 
was what he should have done himself under the circum¬ 
stances), and the suggestion was seized as a comfort by his 
mother. 

“ Sister, for goodness’ sake let ’em put the horse in the 
carriage and take me home; we shall perhaps find her on 
the road. Lucy can’t walk in her dirty clothes,” she said, 
looking at that innocent victim, who was wrapped up in a 
shawl, and sitting with naked feet on the sofa. 

Aunt Pullet was quite willing to take the shortest means 
of restoring her premises to order and quiet, and it was 
not long before Mrs. Tulliver was in the chaise, looking 
anxiously at the most distant point before her. What the 
father would say if Maggie was lost, was a question that 
predominated over every other. 



CHAPTER XI 

MAGGIE TRIES TO RUN AWAY FROM HER SHADOW 

M AGGIE’S intentions, as usual, were on a larger scale 
than Tom had imagined. The resolution that gath¬ 
ered in her mind, after Tom and Lucy had walked away, was 
not so simple as that of going home. No! she would run 
away and go to the gypsies, and Tom should never see her 
any more. That was by no means a new idea to Maggie; she 
had been so often told she was like a gypsy, and “ half wild,” 
that when she was miserable it seemed to her the only way 
of escaping opprobrium, and being entirely in harmony with 
circumstances, would be to live in a little brown tent on the 
commons; the gypsies, she considered, would gladly receive 
her and pay her much respect on account of her superior 
knowledge. She had once mentioned her views on this point 
to Tom, and suggested that he should stain his face brown, 
and they should run away together; but Tom rejected the 
scheme with contempt, observing that gypsies were thieves, 
and hardly got anything to eat, and had nothing to drive 
but a donkey. To-day, however, Maggie thought her misery 
had reached a pitch at which gypsydom was her only refuge, 
and she rose from her seat on the roots of the tree with 

111 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


112 

the sense that this was a great crisis in her life; she would 
run straight away till she came to Dunlow Common, where 
there would certainly be gypsies; and cruel Tom, and the 
rest of her relations who found fault with her, should never 
see her any more. She thought of her father as she ran 
along, but she reconciled herself to the idea of parting with 
him, by determining that she would secretly send him a 
letter by a small gypsy, who would run away without tell¬ 
ing where she was, and just let him know that she was well 
and happy, and always loved him very much. 

Maggie soon got out of breath with running, but by the 
time Tom got to the pond again she was at the distance of 
three long fields, and was on the edge of the lane leading 
to the highroad. She stopped to pant a little, reflecting that 
running away was not a pleasant thing until one had got 
quite to the common where the gypsies were, but her resolu¬ 
tion had not abated; she presently passed through the gate 
into the lane, not knowing where it would lead her, for it was 
not this way that they came from Dorlcote Mill to Garum 
Firs, and she felt all the safer for that, because there was no 
chance of her being overtaken. But she was soon aware, 
not without trembling, that there were two men coming 
along the lane in front of her; she had not thought of meet¬ 
ing strangers, she had been too much occupied with the idea 
of her friends coming after her. The formidable strangers 
were two shabby-looking men with flushed faces, one of 
them carrying a bundle on a stick over his shoulder; but to 
her surprise, while she was dreading their disapprobation as 
a runaway, the man with the bundle stopped, and in a half- 
whining, half-coaxing tone asked her if she had a copper to 
give a poor man. Maggie had a sixpence in her pocket, — 
her uncle Glegg’s present, — which she immediately drew 
out and gave this poor man with a polite smile, hoping he 
would feel very kindly toward her as a generous person. 
“ That’s the only money I’ve got,” she said apologetically. 
“ Thank you, little miss,” said the man, in a less respectful 
and grateful tone than Maggie anticipated, and she even 
observed that he smiled and winked at his companion. She 


BOY AND GIRL 


113 


walked on hurriedly, but was aware that the two men were 
standing still, probably to look after her, and she presently 
heard them laughing loudly. Suddenly it occurred to her 
that they might think she was an idiot; Tom had said 
that her cropped hair made her look like an idiot, and it was 
too painful an idea to be readily forgotten. Besides, she 
had no sleeves on, — only a cape and a bonnet. It was 
clear that she was not likely to make a favorable impression 
on passengers, and she thought she would turn into the 
fields again, but not on the same side of the lane as before, 
lest they should still be uncle Pullet’s fields. She turned 
through the first gate that was not locked, and felt a de¬ 
lightful sense of privacy in creeping along by the hedge¬ 
rows, after her recent humiliating encounter. She was used 
to wandering about the fields by herself, and was less timid 
there than on the highroad. Sometimes she had to climb 
over high gates, but that was a small evil; she was getting 
out of reach very fast, and she should probably soon come 
within sight of Dunlow Common, or at least of some other 
common, for she had heard her father say that you couldn’t 
go very far without coming to a common. She hoped so, 
for she was getting rather tired and hungry, and until she 
reached the gypsies there was no definite prospect of bread 
and butter. 

It was still broad daylight, for aunt Pullet, retaining the 
early habits of the Dodson family, took tea at half-past four 
by the sun, and at five by the kitchen clock; so, though it 
was nearly an hour since Maggie started, there was no 
gathering gloom on the fields to remind her that the night 
would come. Still, it seemed to her that she had been 
walking a very great distance indeed, and it was really 
surprising that the common did not come within sight. 
Hitherto she had been in the rich parish of Garum, where 
there was a great deal of pasture-land, and she had only 
seen one laborer at a distance. That was fortunate in some 
respects, as laborers might be too ignorant to understand 
the propriety of her wanting to go to Dunlow Common; yet 
it would have been better if she could have met some one 


114 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


who would tell her the way without wanting to know any¬ 
thing about her private business. At last, however, the 
green fields came to an end, and Maggie found herself look¬ 
ing through the bars of a gate into a lane with a wide margin 
of grass on each side of it. She had never seen such a wide 
lane before, and, without her knowing why, it gave her the 
impression that the common could not be far off; perhaps 
it was because she saw a donkey with a log to his foot feed¬ 
ing on the grassy margin, for she had seen a donkey with 
that pitiable encumbrance on Dunlow Common when she 
had been across it in her father’s gig. 

She crept through the bars of the gate and walked on with 
new spirit, though not without haunting images of Apollyon, 
and a highwayman with a pistol, and a blinking dwarf in 
yellow with a mouth from ear to ear, and other miscella¬ 
neous dangers. For poor little Maggie had at once the 
timidity of an active imagination and the daring that comes 
from overmastering impulse. She had rushed into the ad¬ 
venture of seeking her unknown kindred, the gypsies; and 
now she was in this strange lane, she hardly dared look on 
one side of her, lest she should see the diabolical blacksmith 
in his leathern apron grinning at her with arms akimbo. It 
was not without a leaping of the heart that she caught sight 
of a small pair of bare legs sticking up, feet uppermost, by 
the side of a hillock; they seemed something hideously 
preternatural, — a diabolical kind of fungus; for she was 
too much agitated at the first glance to see the ragged 
clothes and the dark shaggy head attached to them. 

It was a boy asleep, and Maggie trotted along faster and 
more lightly, lest she should wake him; it did not occur to 
her that he was one of her friends the gypsies, who in all 
probability would have very genial manners. But the fact 
was so, for at the next bend in the lane Maggie actually 
saw the little semicircular black tent with the blue smoke 
rising before it, which was to be her refuge from all the 
blighting obloquy that had pursued her in civilized life. 
She even saw a tall female figure by the column of smoke, 
doubtless the gypsy-mother, who provided the tea and other 


BOY AND GIRL 


115 


groceries; it was astonishing to herself that she did not feel 
more delighted. But it was startling to find the gypsies in a 
lane, after all, and not on a common; indeed, it was rather 
disappointing; for a mysterious illimitable common, where 
there were sandpits to hide in, and one was out of every¬ 
body’s reach, had always made part of Maggie’s picture of 
gypsy life. She went on, however, and thought with some 
comfort that gypsies most likely knew nothing about idiots, 
so there was no danger of their falling into the mistake of 
setting her down at the first glance as an idiot. It was 
plain she had attracted attention; for the tall figure, who 
proved to be a young woman with a baby on her arm, 
walked slowly to meet her. Maggie looked up in the new 
face rather tremblingly as it approached, and was reassured 
by the thought that her aunt Pullet and the rest were right 
when they called her a gypsy; for this face, with the bright 
dark eyes and the long hair, was really something like 
what she used to see in the glass before she cut her hair off. 

“ My little lady, where are you going to? ” the gypsy said, 
in a tone of coaxing deference. 

It was delightful, and just what Maggie expected; the 
gypsies saw at once that she was a little lady, and were 
prepared to treat her accordingly. 

“ Not any farther,” said Maggie, feeling as if she were 
saying what she had rehearsed in a dream. “ I’m come to 
stay with you , please.” 

“ That’s pretty; come, then. Why, what a nice little 
lady you are, to be sure! ” said the gypsy, taking her by 
the hand. Maggie thought her very agreeable, but wished 
she had not been so dirty. 

There was quite a group round the fire when they reached 
it. An old gypsy woman was seated on the ground nursing 
her knees, and occasionally poking a skewer into the round 
kettle that sent forth an odorous steam; two small shock¬ 
headed children were lying prone and resting on their el¬ 
bows something like small sphinxes; and A placid donkey 
was bending his head over a tall girl, whp, lying on her 
back, was scratching his nose and indulging him with a bite 



116 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


of excellent stolen hay. The slanting sunlight fell kindly 
upon them, and the scene was really very pretty and com¬ 
fortable, Maggie thought, only she hoped they would soon 
set out the tea-cups. Everything would be quite charming 
when she had taught the gypsies to use a washing-basin, and 
to feel an interest in books. It was a little confusing, though, 
that the young woman began to speak to the old one in a lan¬ 
guage which Maggie did not understand, while the tall 
girl, who was feeding the donkey, sat up and stared at her 
without offering any salutation. At last the old woman 
said, — 

“ What! my pretty lady, are you come to stay with us? 
Sit ye down and tell us where you come from.” 

It was just like a story; Maggie liked to be called pretty 
lady and treated in this way. She sat down and said,— 

“ I’m come from home because I’m unhappy, and I mean 
to be a gypsy. I’ll live with you if you like, and I can teach 
you a great many things.” 

“ Such a clever little lady,” said the woman with the 
baby, sitting down by Maggie, and allowing baby to 
crawl; “ and such a pretty bonnet and frock,” she added, 
taking off Maggie’s bonnet and looking at it while she made 
an observation to the old woman, in the unknown language. 
The tall girl snatched the bonnet and put it on her own 
head hind-foremost with a grin; but Maggie was determined 
not to show any weakness on this subject, as if she were 
susceptible about her bonnet. 

“I don’t want to wear a bonnet,” she said; “I’d rather 
wear a red handkerchief, like yours ” (looking at her friend 
by her side). “ My hair was quite long till yesterday, when I 
cut it off; but I dare say it will grow again very soon,” she 
added apologetically, thinking it probable the gypsies had a 
strong prejudice in favor of long hair. And Maggie had 
forgotten even her hunger at that moment in the desire to 
conciliate gypsy opinion. 

“ Oh, what a nice little lady! — and rich, I’m sure,” said 
the old woman. “ Didn’t you live in a beautiful house at 
home? ” 


BOY AND GIRL 


117 


“ Yes, my home is pretty, and I’m very fond of the river, 
where we go fishing, but I’m often very unhappy. I should 
have liked to bring my books with me, but I came away 
in a hurry, you know. But I can tell you almost everything 
there is in my books, I’ve read them so many times, and that 
will amuse you. And I can tell you something about 
Geography too, — that’s about the world we live in, — very 
useful and interesting. Did you ever hear about Colum¬ 
bus? ” 

Maggie’s eyes had begun to sparkle and her cheeks to 
flush, — she was really beginning to instruct the gypsies, 
and gaining great influence over them. The gypsies them¬ 
selves were not without amazement at this talk, though 
their attention was divided by the contents of Maggie’s 
pocket, which the friend at her right hand had by this 
time emptied without attracting her notice. 

“ Is that where you live, my little lady?” said the old 
woman at the mention of Columbus. 

“ Oh, no! ” said Maggie, with some pity; “ Columbus was 
a very wonderful man, who found out half the world, and 
they put chains on him and treated him very badly, you 
know; it’s in my Catechism of Geography, but perhaps it’s 
rather too long to tell before tea — I want my tea so.” 

The last words burst from Maggie, in spite of herself, 
with sudden drop from patronizing instruction to simple 
peevishness. 

“ Why, she’s hungry, poor little lady,” said the younger 
woman. “ Give her some o’ the cold victual. You’ve been 
walking a good way, I’ll be bound, my dear. Where’s your 
home? ” 

“ It’s Dorlcote Mill, a good way off,” said Maggie. “ My 
father is Mr. Tulliver, but we mustn’t let him know where 
I am, else he’ll fetch me home again. Where does the queen 
of the gypsies live ? ” 

“ What! do you want to go to her, my little lady? ” said 
the younger woman. The tall girl meanwhile was con¬ 
stantly staring at Maggie and grinning. Her manners were 
certainly not agreeable. 


118 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


“ No/’ said Maggie, “ I’m only thinking that if she isn’t 
a very good queen you might be glad when she died, and 
you could choose another. If I was a queen, I’d be a very 
good queen, and kind to everybody.” 

“ Here’s a bit o’ nice victual, then,” said the old woman, 
handing to Maggie a lump of dry bread, which she had taken 
from a bag of scraps, and a piece of cold bacon. 

“ Thank you,” said Maggie, looking at the food without 
taking it; “ but will you give me some bread-and-butter 
and tea instead? I don’t like bacon.” 

“ We’ve got no tea nor butter,” said the old woman, 
with something like a scowl, as if she were getting tired 
of coaxing. 

“ Oh, a little bread and treacle would do,” said Maggie. 

“ We han’t got no treacle,” said the old woman, crossly, 
whereupon there followed a sharp dialogue between the 
two women in their unknown tongue, and one of the small 
sphinxes snatched at the bread-and-bacon, and began to eat 
it. At this moment the tall girl, who had gone a few yards 
off, came back, and said something which produced a strong 
effect. The old woman, seeming to forget Maggie’s hunger, 
poked the skewer into the pot with new vigor, and the 
younger crept under the tent, and reached out some platters 
and spoons. Maggie trembled a little, and was afraid the 
tears would come into her eyes. Meanwhile the tall girl 
gave a shrill cry, and presently came running up the boy 
whom Maggie had passed as he was sleeping, — a rough 
urchin about the age of Tom. He stared at Maggie, and 
there ensued much incomprehensible chattering. She felt 
very lonely, and was quite sure she should begin to cry 
before long; the gypsies didn’t seem to mind her at all, and 
she felt quite weak among them. But the springing tears 
were checked by new terror, when two men came up, whose 
approach had been the cause of the sudden excitement. The 
elder of the two carried a bag, which he flung down, address¬ 
ing the women in a loud and scolding tone, which they 
answered by a shower of treble sauciness; while a black cur 
ran barking up to Maggie, and threw her into a tremor that 


BOY AND GIRL 


119 


only found a new cause in the curses with which the younger 
man called the dog off, and gave him a rap with a great 
stick he held in his hand. 

Maggie felt that it was impossible she should ever be 
queen of these people, or ever communicate to them amusing 
and useful knowledge. 

Both the men now seemed to be inquiring about Maggie, 
for they looked at her, and the tone of the conversation be¬ 
came of that pacific kind which implies curiosity on one 
side and the power of satisfying it on the other. At last 
the younger woman said in her previous deferential, coax¬ 
ing tone, — 

“This nice little lady’s come to live with us; aren’t you 
glad ? ” 

“ Ay, very glad,” said the younger man, who was looking 
at Maggie’s silver thimble and other small matters that had 
been taken from her pocket. He returned them all except 
the thimble to the younger woman, with some observation, 
and she immediately restored them to Maggie’s pocket, 
while the men seated themselves, and began to attack the 
contents of the kettle, — a stew of meat and potatoes,— 
which had been taken off the fire and turned out into a 
yellow platter. 

Maggie began to think that Tom must be right about 
the gypsies; they must certainly be thieves, unless the man 
meant to return her thimble by and by. She would 
willingly have given it to him, for she was not at all at¬ 
tached to her thimble; but the idea that she was among 
thieves prevented her from feeling any comfort in the re¬ 
vival of deference and attention toward her; all thieves, 
except Robin Hood, were wicked people. The women saw 
she was frightened. 

“ We’ve got nothing nice for a lady to eat,” said the old 
woman, in her coaxing tone. “ And she’s so hungry, sweet 
little lady.” 

“ Here, my dear, try if you can eat a bit o’ this,” said 
the younger woman, handing some of the stew on a brown 
dish with an iron spoon to Maggie, who, remembering that 


120 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


the old woman had seemed angry with her for not liking 
the bread-and-bacon, dared not refuse the stew, though fear 
had chased away her appetite. If her father would but 
come by in the gig and take her up! Or even if Jack the 
Giantkiller, or Mr. Greatheart, or St. George who slew 
the dragon on the half-pennies, would happen to pass that 
way! But Maggie thought with a sinking heart that these 
heroes were never seen in the neighborhood of St. Ogg’s; 
nothing very wonderful ever came there. 

Maggie Tulliver, you perceive, was by no means that 
well-trained, well-informed young person that a small female 
of eight or nine necessarily is in these days; she had only 
been to school a year at St. Ogg’s, and had so few books 
that she sometimes read the dictionary; so that in travelling 
over her small mind you would have found the most un¬ 
expected ignorance as well as unexpected knowledge. She 
could have informed you that there was such a word as 
“ polygamy,” and being also acquainted with “ polysyllable,” 
she had deduced the conclusion that “ poly ” meant 
“ many ” ; but she had had no idea that gypsies were not 
well supplied with groceries, and her thoughts generally 
were the oddest mixture of clear-eyed acumen and blind 
dreams. 

Her ideas about the gypsies had undergone a rapid modi¬ 
fication in the last five minutes. From having considered 
them very respectful companions, amenable to instruction, 
she had begun to think that they meant perhaps to kill 
her as soon as it was dark, and cut up her body for gradual 
cooking; the suspicion crossed her that the fierce-eyed old 
man was in fact the Devil, who might drop that trans¬ 
parent disguise at any moment, and turn either into the 
grinning blacksmith, or else a fiery-eyed monster with 
dragon’s wings. It was no use trying to eat the stew, and 
yet the thing she most dreaded was to offend the gypsies, 
by betraying her extremely unfavorable opinion of them; 
and she wondered, with a keenness of interest that no theo¬ 
logian could have exceeded, whether, if the Devil were 
really present, he would know her thoughts. 


BOY AND GIRL 


121 


“ What! you don’t like the smell of it, my dear,” said the 
young woman, observing that Maggie did not even take a 
spoonful of the stew. “ Try a bit, come.” 

“ No, thank you,” said Maggie, summoning all her force 
for a desperate effort, and trying to smile in a friendly 
way. “ I haven’t time, I think; it seems getting darker. I 
think I must go home now, and come again another day, 
and then I can bring you a basket with some jam-tarts and 
things.” 

Maggie rose from her seat as she threw out this illusory 
prospect, devoutly hoping that Apollyon was gullible; but 
her hope sank when the old gypsy-woman said, “ Stop a 
bit, stop a bit, little lady; we’ll take you home, all safe, 
when we’ve done supper; you shall ride home, like a lady.” 

Maggie sat down again, with little faith in this promise, 
though she presently saw the tall girl putting a bridle on 
the donkey, and throwing a couple of bags on his back. 

“ Now, then, little missis,” said the younger man, rising, 
and leading the donkey forward, “ tell us where you live; 
what’s the name o’ the place? ” 

“ Dorlcote Mill is my home,” said Maggie, eagerly. “ My 
father is Mr. Tulliver; he lives there.” 

“ What! a big mill a little way this side o’ St. Ogg’s? ” 

“Yes,” said Maggie. “Is it far off? I think I should 
like to walk there, if you please.” 

“ No, no, it’ll be getting dark, we must make haste. And 
the donkey’ll carry you as nice as can be; you’ll see.” 

He lifted Maggie as he spoke, and set her on the donkey. 
She felt relieved that it was not the old man who seemed to 
be going with her, but she had only a trembling hope that she 
was really going home. 

“ Here’s your pretty bonnet,” said the younger woman, 
putting that recently despised but now welcome article of 
costume on Maggie’s head; “ and you’ll say we’ve been very 
good to you, won’t you? and what a nice little lady we said 
you was.” 

“ Oh, yes, thank you,” said Maggie, “ I’m very much 
obliged to you. But I wish you’d go with me too.” She 


122 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


thought anything was better than going with one of the 
dreadful men alone; it would be more cheerful to be mur¬ 
dered by a larger party. 

“ Ah, you’re fondest o’ me, aren’t you? ” said the woman. 
“But I can’t go; you’ll go too fast for me.” 

It now appeared that the man also was to be seated on 
the donkey, holding Maggie before him, and she was as in¬ 
capable of remonstrating against this arrangement as the 
donkey himself, though no nightmare had ever seemed to 
her more horrible. When the woman had patted her on the 
back, and said “ Good-by,” the donkey, at a strong hint from 
the man’s stick, set off at a rapid walk along the lane to¬ 
ward the point Maggie had come from an hour ago, while 
the tall girl and the rough urchin, also furnished with sticks, 
obligingly escorted them for the first hundred yards, with 
much screaming and thwacking. 

Not Leonore, in that preternatural midnight excursion 
with her phantom lover, was more terrified than poor 
Maggie in this entirely natural ride on a short-paced 
donkey, with a gypsy behind her, who considered that he 
was earning half-a-crown. The red light of the setting sun 
seemed to have a portentous meaning, with which the alarm¬ 
ing bray of the second donkey with the log on its foot 
must surely have some connection. Two low thatched cot¬ 
tages — the only houses they passed in this lane — seemed 
to add to its dreariness; they had no windows to speak of, 
and the doors were closed; it was probable that they were 
inhabited by witches, and it was a relief to find that the 
donkey did not stop there. 

At last — oh, sight of joy! —this lane, the longest in the 
world, was coming to an end, was opening on a broad high¬ 
road, where there was actually a coach passing! And there 
was a finger-post at the corner, — she had surely seen that 
finger-post before, — “ To St. Ogg’s, 2 miles.” The gypsy 
really meant to take her home, then; he was probably a 
good man, after all, and might have been rather hurt at 
the thought that she didn’t like coming with him alone. 
This idea became stronger as she felt more and more cer- 


BOY AND GIRL 


123 


tain that she knew the road quite well, and she was con¬ 
sidering how she might open a conversation with the in¬ 
jured gypsy, and not only gratify his feelings but efface the 
impression of her cowardice, when, as they reached a cross¬ 
road, Maggie caught sight of some one coming on a white¬ 
faced horse. 

“ Oh, stop, stop! t she cried out. “There’s my father! 
Oh, father, father! ” 

The sudden joy was almost painful, and before her father 
reached her, she was sobbing. Great was Mr. Tulliver’s 
wonder, for he had made a round from Basset, and had not 
yet been home. 

“ Why, what’s the meaning o’ this? ” he said, checking 
his horse, while Maggie slipped from the donkey and ran 
to her father’s stirrup. 

“ The little miss lost herself, I reckon,” said the gypsy. 
“ She’d come to our tent at the far end o’ Dunlow Lane, and 
I was bringing her where she said her home was. It’s a 
good way to come arter being on the tramp all day.” 

“ Oh, yes, father, he’s been very good to bring me home,” 
said Maggie, — “a very kind, good man! ” 

“ Here, then, my man,” said Mr. Tulliver, taking out five 
shillings. “ It’s the best day’s work you ever did. I couldn’t 
afford to lose the little wench; here, lift her up before 
me.” 

“ Why, Maggie, how’s this, how’s this ? ” he said, as they 
rode along, while she laid her head against her father and 
sobbed. “ How came you to be rambling about and lose 
yourself ? ” 

“ Oh, father,” sobbed Maggie, “ I ran away because I was 
so unhappy; Tom was so angry with me. I couldn’t bear 
it.” 

“ Pooh, pooh,” said Mr. Tulliver, soothingly, “ you mustn’t 
think o’ running away from father. What ’ud father do 
without his little wench? ” 

“Oh no, I never will again, father — never.” 

Mr. Tulliver spoke his mind very strongly when he 
reached home that evening; and the effect was seen in the 


124 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


remarkable fact that Maggie never heard one reproach 
from her mother, or one taunt from Tom, about this foolish 
business of her running away to the gypsies. Maggie was 
rather awe-stricken by this unusual treatment, and some¬ 
times thought that her conduct had been too wicked to be 
alluded to. 


CHAPTER XII 

MR. AND MRS. GLEGG AT HOME 

I N ORDER to see Mr. and Mrs. Glegg at home, we must 
enter the town of St. Ogg’s, — that venerable town with 
the red-fluted roofs and the broad warehouse gables, where 
the black ships unlade themselves of their burthens from 
the far north, and carry away, in exchange, the precious 
inland products, the well-crushed cheese and the soft fleeces 
which my refined readers have doubtless become acquainted 
with through the medium of the best classic pastorals. 

It is one of those old, old towns which impress one as 
a continuation and outgrowth of nature, as much as the 
nests of the bower-birds or the winding galleries of the 
white ants; a town which carries, the traces of its long growth 
and history like a millennial tree, and has sprung up and 
developed in the same spot between the river and the low 
hill from the time when the Roman legions turned their 
backs on it from the camp on the hillside, and the long¬ 
haired sea-kings came up the river and looked with fierce, 
eager eyes at the fatness of the land. It is a town “ familiar 
with forgotten years.” The shadow of the Saxon hero-king 
still walks there fitfully, reviewing the scenes of his youth 
and love-time, and is met by the gloomier shadow of the 
dreadful heathen Dane, who was stabbed in the midst of 
his warriors by the sword of an invisible avenger, and who 
rises on autumn evenings like a white mist from his tumulus 
on the hill, and hovers in the court of the old hall by the 
riverside — the spot where he was thus miraculously slain 


i 


BOY AND GIRL 


125 


in 'the days before the old hall was built. It was the 
Normans who began to build that fine old hall, which is like 
the town, telling of the thoughts and hands of widely- 
sundered generations; but it is all so old that we look with 
loving pardon at its inconsistencies, and are well content 
that they who built the stone oriel, and they who built the 
Gothic fagade and towers of finest small brickwork with 
the trefoil ornament, and the windows and battlements de¬ 
fined with stone, did not sacrilegiously pull down the ancient 
half-timbered body, with its oak-roofed banqueting-hall. 

But older even than this old hall is perhaps the bit of 
wall now built into the belfry of the parish church, and said 
to be a remnant of the original chapel dedicated to St. 
Ogg, the patron saint of this ancient town, of whose history 
I possess several manuscript versions. I incline to the 
briefest, since, if it should not be wholly true, it is at least 
likely to contain the least falsehood. “ Ogg the son of 
Beorl,” says my private hagiographer, “ was a boatman who 
gained a scanty living by ferrying passengers across the 
river Floss. And it came to pass, one evening when the 
winds were high, that there sat moaning by the brink of 
the river a woman with a child in her arms; and she was clad 
in rags, and had a worn and withered look, and she craved 
to be rowed across the river. And the men thereabout 
questioned her and said, ‘ Wherefore dost thou desire to 
cross the river? Tarry till the morning, and take shelter 
here for the night: so shaft thou be wise and not foolish/ 
Still she went on to mourn and crave. But Ogg the son 
of Beorl came up and said, ‘ I will ferry thee across: it is 
enough that thy heart needs it/ And he ferried her across. 
And it came to pass, when she stepped ashore, that her rags 
were turned into robes of flowing white, and her face be¬ 
came bright with exceeding beauty, and there was a glory 
around it, so that she shed a light on the water like the moon 
in its brightness. And she said —‘ Ogg the son of Beorl, 
thou art blessed in that thou didst not question and wrangle 
with the heart’s need, but wast smitten with pity, and didst 
straightway relieve the same. And from henceforth whoso 


126 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


steps into thy boat shall be in no peril from the storm; and 
whenever it puts forth to the rescue, it shall save the lives 
both of men and beasts/ And when the floods came, many 
were saved by reason of that blessing on the boat. But 
when Ogg the son of Beorl died, behold, in the parting of 
his soul, the boat loosed itself from its moorings and was 
floated with the ebbing tide in great swiftness to the ocean, 
and was seen no more. Yet it was witnessed in the floods of 
aftertime, that at the coming on of eventide, Ogg the son 
of Beorl was always seen with his boat upon the wide- 
spreading waters, and the Blessed Virgin sat in the prow, 
shedding a light around as of the moon in its brightness, so 
that the rowers in the gathering darkness took heart and 
pulled anew.” 

This legend, one sees, reflects from a far-off time the visi¬ 
tation of the floods, which, even when they left human life 
untouched, were widely fatal to the helpless cattle, and 
swept as sudden death over all smaller living things. But 
the town knew worse troubles even than the floods,— 
troubles of the civil wars, when it was a continual fighting- 
place, where first Puritans thanked God for the blood of the 
Loyalists, and then Loyalists thanked God for the blood of 
the Puritans. Many honest citizens lost all their possessions 
for conscience’ sake in those times, and went forth beggared 
from their native town. Doubtless there are many houses 
standing now on which those honest citizens turned their 
backs in sorrow, — quaint-gabled houses looking on the river, 
jammed between newer warehouses, and penetrated by sur¬ 
prising passages, which turn and turn at sharp angles till 
they lead you out on a muddy strand overflowed continu¬ 
ally by the rushing tide. Everywhere the brick houses have 
a mellow look, and in Mrs. Glegg’s day there was no incon¬ 
gruous new-fashioned smartness, no plate-glass in shop- 
windows, no fresh stucco-facing or other fallacious attempt 
to make fine old red St. Ogg’s wear the air of a town that 
sprang up yesterday. The shop-windows were small and 
unpretending; for the farmers’ wives and daughters who 
came to do their shopping on market-days were not to be 


BOY AND GIRL 


127 


withdrawn from their regular well-known shops; and the 
tradesmen had no wares intended for customers who would 
go on their way and be seen no more. 

Mrs. Glegg had both a front and a back parlor in her ex¬ 
cellent house at St. Ogg’s, so that she had two points of view 
from which she could observe the weakness of her fellow- 
beings, and reinforce her thankfulness for her own excep¬ 
tional strength of mind. From her front windows she could 
look down the Tofton Road, leading out of St. Ogg’s, and 
note the growing tendency to “ gadding about ” in the wives 
of men not retired from business, together with a practice of 
wearing woven cotton stockings, which opened a dreary 
prospect for the coming generation; and from her back 
windows she could look down the pleasant garden and 
orchard which stretched to the river, and observe the folly 
of Mr. Glegg in spending his time among “ them flowers and 
vegetables.” For Mr. Glegg, having retired from active 
business as a wool-stapler for the purpose of enjoying him¬ 
self through the rest of his life, had found this last occupa¬ 
tion so much more severe than his business, that he had been 
driven into amateur hard labor as a dissipation, and habitu¬ 
ally relaxed by doing the work of two ordinary gardeners. 
The economizing of a gardener’s wages might perhaps have 
induced Mrs. Glegg to wink at this folly, if it were possible 
for a healthy female mind even to simulate respect for a 
husband’s hobby. But it is well known that this conjugal 
complacency belongs only to the weaker portion of the sex, 
who are scarcely alive to the responsibilities of a wife as a 
constituted check on her husband’s pleasures, which are 
hardly ever of a rational or commendable kind. 

Mr. Glegg on his side, too, had a double source of mental 
occupation, which gave every promise of being inexhaustible. 
On the one hand, he surprised himself by his discoveries in 
natural history, finding that his piece of garden-ground 
contained wonderful caterpillars, slugs, and insects, which, 
so far as he had heard, had never before attracted human 
observation; and he noticed remarkable coincidences be¬ 
tween these zoological phenomena and the great events of 


128 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


that time, — as, for example, that before the burning of 
York Minster there had been mysterious serpentine marks 
on the leaves of the rose-trees, together with an unusual 
prevalence of slugs, which he had been puzzled to know the 
meaning of, until it flashed upon him with this melancholy 
conflagration. (Mr. Glegg had an unusual amount of men¬ 
tal activity, which, when disengaged from the wool business, 
naturally made itself a pathway in other directions.) And 
his second subject of meditation was the “ contrairiness ” 
of the female mind, as typically exhibited in Mrs. Glegg. 
That a creature made — in a genealogical sense — out of a 
man’s rib, and in this particular case maintained in the 
highest respectability without any trouble of her own, should 
be normally in a state of contradiction to the blandest prop¬ 
ositions and even to the most accommodating concessions, 
was a mystery in the scheme of things to which he had often 
in vain sought a clew in the early chapters of Genesis. 

Mr. Glegg had chosen the eldest Miss Dodson as a hand¬ 
some embodiment of female prudence and thrift, and being 
himself of a money-getting, money-keeping turn, had calcu¬ 
lated on much conjugal harmony. But in that curious com¬ 
pound, the feminine character, it may easily happen that the 
flavor is unpleasant in spite of excellent ingredients; and a 
fine systematic stinginess may be accompanied with a season¬ 
ing that quite spoils its relish.. Now, good Mr. Glegg himself 
was stingy in the most amiable manner; his neighbors called 
him “ near,” which always means that the person in ques¬ 
tion is a lovable skinflint. If you expressed a preference for 
cheese-parings, Mr. Glegg would remember to save them 
for you, with a good-natured delight in gratifying your 
palate, and he was given to pet all animals which required 
no appreciable keep. There was no humbug or hypocrisy 
about Mr. Glegg; his eyes would have watered with true 
feeling over the sale of a widow’s furniture, which a five- 
pound note from his side pocket would have prevented; but 
a donation of five pounds to a person “ in a small way of 
life ” would have seemed to him a mad kind of lavishness 
rather than “ charity,” which had always presented itself 


BOY AND GIRL 


129 


to him as a contribution of small aids, not a neutralizing of 
misfortune. And Mr. Glegg was just as fond of saving 
other people’s money as his own; he would have ridden as 
far round to avoid a turnpike when his expenses were to be 
paid for him, as when they were to come out of his own 
pocket, and was quite zealous in trying to induce indifferent, 
acquaintances to adopt a cheap substitute for blacking. 

This inalienable habit of saving, as an end in itself, be¬ 
longed to the industrious men of business of a former genera¬ 
tion, who made their fortunes slowly. In old-fashioned times 
an “ independence ” was hardly ever made without a little 
miserliness as a condition, and you would have found that 
quality in every provincial district, combined with charac¬ 
ters as various as the fruits from which we can extract acid. 
The true Harpagons were always marked and exceptional 
characters; not so the worthy tax-payers, who, having once 
pinched from real necessity, retained even in the midst of 
their comfortable retirement, with their wall-fruit and wine- 
bins, the habit of regarding life as an ingenious process of 
nibbling out one’s livelihood without leaving any perceptible 
deficit, and who would have been as immediately prompted 
to give up a newly taxed luxury when they had their clear 
five hundred a year, as when they had only five hundred 
pounds of capital. Mr. Glegg was one of these men, found 
so impracticable by chancellors of the exchequer; and know¬ 
ing this, you will be the better able to understand why he 
had not swerved from the conviction that he had made an 
eligible marriage, in spite of the too-pungent seasoning that 
nature had given to the eldest Miss Dodson’s virtues. A 
man with an affectionate disposition, who finds a wife to 
concur with his fundamental idea of life, easily comes to per¬ 
suade himself that no other woman would have suited him 
so well, and does a little daily snapping and quarrelling with¬ 
out any sense of alienation. Mr. Glegg, being of a reflective 
turn, and no longer occupied with wool, had much wonder¬ 
ing meditation on the peculiar constitution of the female 
mind as unfolded to him in his domestic life; and yet he 
thought Mrs. Glegg’s household ways a model for her sex. 


130 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


It struck him as a pitiable irregularity in other women if 
they did not roll up their table-napkins with the same tight¬ 
ness and emphasis as Mrs. Glegg did, if their pastry had a 
less leathery consistence, and their damson cheese a less 
venerable hardness than hers; nay, even the peculiar com¬ 
bination of grocery and drug-like odors in Mrs. Glegg’s 
private cupboard impressed him as the only right thing in 
the way of cupboard smells. I am not sure that he would 
not have longed for the quarrelling again, if it had ceased for 
an entire week; and it is certain that an acquiescent, mild 
wife would have left his meditations comparatively jejune 
and barren of mystery. 

Mr. Glegg’s unmistakable kind-heartedness was shown in 
this, that it pained him more to see his wife at variance with 
others, — even with Dolly, the servant, — than to be in a 
state of cavil with her himself; and the quarrel between her 
and Mr. Tulliver vexed him so much that it quite nullified 
the pleasure he would otherwise have had in the state of 
his early cabbages, as he walked in his garden before break¬ 
fast the next morning. Still, he went in to breakfast with 
some slight hope that, now Mrs. Glegg had “ slept upon it,” 
her anger might be subdued enough to give way to her usu¬ 
ally strong sense of family decorum. She had been used to 
boast that there had never been any of those deadly quar¬ 
rels among the Dodsons which had disgraced other families; 
that no Dodson had ever been “ cut off with a shilling,” and 
no cousin of the Dodsons disowned; as, indeed, why should 
they be? For they had no cousins who had not money out 
at use, or some houses of their own, at the very least. 

There was one evening-cloud which had always disap¬ 
peared from Mrs. Glegg’s brow when she sat at the break- 
fast-table. It was her fuzzy front of curls; for as she occu¬ 
pied herself in household matters in the morning it would 
have been a mere extravagance to put on anything so super¬ 
fluous to the making of leathery pastry as a fuzzy curled 
front. By half-past ten decorum demanded the front; until 
then Mrs. Glegg could economize it, and society would never 
be any the wiser. But the absence of that cloud only left 


BOY AND GIRL 


131 


it more apparent that the cloud of severity remained; and 
Mr. Glegg, perceiving this, as he sat down to his milk- 
porridge, which it was his old frugal habit to stem his morn¬ 
ing hunger with, prudently resolved to leave the first fe- 
mark to Mrs. Glegg, lest, to so delicate an article as a lady’s 
temper, the slightest touch should do mischief. People who 
seem to enjoy their ill temper have a way of keeping it in 
fine condition by inflicting privations on themselves. That 
was Mrs. Glegg’s way. She made her tea weaker than usual 
this morning, and declined butter. It was a hard case that 
a vigorous mood for quarrelling, so highly capable of using 
any opportunity, should not meet with a single remark from 
Mr. Glegg on which to exercise itself. But by and by it ap¬ 
peared that his silence would answer the purpose, for he 
heard himself apostrophized at last in that tone peculiar to 
the wife of one’s bosom. 

“ Well, Mr. Glegg! it’s a poor return I get for making you 
the wife I’ve made you all these years. If this is the way 
I’m to be treated, I’d better ha’ known it before my poor 
father died, and then, when I’d wanted a home, I should ha’ 
gone elsewhere, as the choice was offered me.” 

Mr. Glegg paused from his porridge and looked up, not 
with any new amazement, but simply with that quiet, 
habitual wonder with which we regard constant mysteries. 

“ Why, Mrs. G., what have I done now? ” 

“ Done now, Mr. Glegg? done now? — I’m sorry for you.” 

Not seeing his way to any pertinent answer, Mr. Glegg re¬ 
verted to his porridge. 

“ There’s husbands in the world,” continued Mrs. Glegg, 
after a pause, “ as ’ud have known how to do something dif¬ 
ferent to siding with everybody else against their own wives. 
Perhaps I’m wrong and you can teach me better. But 
I’ve allays heard as it’s the husband’s place to stand by 
the wife, instead o’ rejoicing and triumphing when folks in¬ 
sult her.” 

“ Now, what call have you to say that? ” said Mr. Glegg, 
rather warmly, for though a kind man, he was not as meek 
as Moses. “ When did I rejoice or triumph over you? ” 


132 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


“ There’s ways o’ doing things worse than speaking out 
plain, Mr. Glegg. I’d sooner you’d tell me to my face as 
you make light of me, than try to make out as everybody’s 
in‘the right but me, and come to your breakfast in the morn¬ 
ing, as I’ve hardly slept an hour this night, and sulk at me 
as if I was the dirt under your feet.” 

“ Sulk at you? ” said Mr. Glegg, in a tone of angry face¬ 
tiousness. “ You’re like a tipsy man as thinks everybody’s 
had too much but himself.” 

“ Don’t lower yourself with using coarse language to me, 
Mr. Glegg! It makes you look very small, though you can’t 
see yourself,” said Mrs. Glegg, in a tone of energetic com¬ 
passion. “ A man in your place should set an example, and 
talk more sensible.” 

“ Yes; but will you listen to sense? ” retorted Mr. Glegg, 
sharply. “ The best sense I can talk to you is what I said 
last night, — as you’re i’ the wrong to think o’ calling in your 
money, when it’s safe enough if you’d let it alone, all because 
of a bit of a tiff, and I was in hopes you’d ha’ altered your 
mind this morning. But if you’d like to call it in, don’t do 
it in a hurry now, and breed more enmity in the family, but 
wait till there’s a pretty mortgage to be had without any 
trouble. You’d have to set the lawyer to work now to find 
an investment, and make no end o’ expense.” 

Mrs. Glegg felt there was really something in this, but she 
tossed her head and emitted a guttural interjection to indi¬ 
cate that her silence was only an armistice, not a peace. 
And, in fact, hostilities soon broke out again. 

“ I’ll thank you for my cup o’ tea, now, Mrs. G.,” said Mr. 
Glegg, seeing that she did not proceed to give it him as usual, 
when he had finished his porridge. She lifted the teapot 
with a slight toss of the head, and said, — 

“ I’m glad to hear you’ll thank me, Mr. Glegg. It’s little 
thanks I get for what I do for folks i’ this world. Though 
there’s never a woman o’ your side o’ the family, Mr. Glegg, 
as is fit to stand up with me, and I’d say it if I was on my 
dying bed. Not but what I’ve allays conducted myself civil 
to your kin, and there isn’t one of ’em can say the contrary, 


BOY AND GIRL 133 

though my equils they aren’t, and nobody shall make me 
say it.” 

“ You’d better leave finding fault wi’ my kin till you’ve 
left off quarrelling with your own, Mrs. G.,” said Mr. 
Glegg, with angry sarcasm. “ I’ll trouble you for the 
milk-jug.” 

“ That’s as false a word as ever you spoke, Mr. Glegg,” 
said the lady, pouring out the milk with unusual profuse¬ 
ness, as much as to say, if he wanted milk he should have it 
with a vengeance. “ And you know it’s false. I’m not the 
woman to quarrel with my own kin; you may, for I’ve 
known you do it.” 

“ Why, what did you call it yesterday, then, leaving your 
sister’s house in a tantrum ? ” 

“ I’d no quarrel wi’ my sister, Mr. Glegg, and it’s false to 
say it. Mr. Tulliver’s none o’ my blood, and it was him 
quarrelled with me, and drove me out o’ the house. But 
perhaps you’d have had me stay and be swore at, Mr. 
Glegg; perhaps you was vexed not to hear more abuse and 
foul language poured out upo’ your own wife. But, let me 
tell you, it’s your disgrace.” 

“ Did ever anybody hear the like i’ this parish? ” said Mr. 
Glegg, getting hot. “ A woman, with everything provided 
for her, and allowed to keep her own money the same as if it 
was settled on her, and with a gig new stuffed and lined at 
no end o’ expense, and provided for when I die beyond any¬ 
thing she could expect — to go on i’ this way, biting and 
snapping like a mad dog! It’s beyond everything, as God 
A’mighty should ha’ made women so.” (These last words 
were uttered in a tone of sorrowful agitation. Mr. Glegg 
pushed his tea from him, and tapped the table with both his 
hands.) 

“ Well, Mr. Glegg, if those are your feelings, it’s best they 
should be known,” said Mrs. Glegg, taking off her napkin, 
and folding it in an excited manner. “ But if you talk o’ 
my being provided for beyond what I could expect, I beg 
leave to tell you as I’d a right to expect a many things as I 
don’t find. And as to my being like a mad dog, it’s well if 


134 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


you’re not cried shame on by the county for your treatment 
of me, for it’s what I can’t bear, and I won’t bear-” 

Here Mrs. Glegg’s voice intimated that she was going to 
cry, and breaking off from speech, she rang the bell violently. 

“ Sally,” she said, rising from her chair, and speaking in 
rather a choked voice, “ light a fire upstairs, and put the 
blinds down. Mr. Glegg, you’ll please to order what you’d 
like for dinner. I shall have gruel.” 

Mrs. Glegg walked across the room to the small bookcase, 
and took down Baxter’s Saints' Everlasting Rest, which she 
carried with her upstairs. It was the book she was accus¬ 
tomed to lay open before her on special occasions, — on wet 
Sunday mornings, or when she heard of a death in the fam¬ 
ily, or when, as in this case, her quarrel with Mr. Glegg had 
been set an octave higher than usual. 

But Mrs. Glegg carried something else upstairs with her, 
which, together with the Saints’ Rest and the gruel, may 
have had some influence in gradually calming her feelings, 
and making it possible for her to endure existence on the 
ground-floor shortly before tea-time. This was, partly, Mr. 
Glegg’s suggestion that she would do well to let her five 
hundred lie still until a good investment turned up; and, 
further, his parenthetic hint at his handsome provision for 
her in case of his death. Mr. Glegg, like all men of his 
stamp, was extremely reticent about his will; and Mrs. 
Glegg, in her gloomier moments, had forebodings that, like 
other husbands of whom she had heard, he might cherish 
the mean project of heightening her grief at his death by 
leaving her poorly off, in which case she was firmly resolved 
that she would have scarcely any weeper on her bonnet, and 
would cry no more than if he had been a second husband. 
But if he had really shown her any testamentary tenderness, 
it would be affecting to think of him, poor man, when he 
was gone; and even his foolish fuss about the flowers and 
garden-stuff, and his insistence on the subject of snails, 
would be touching when it was once fairly at an end. To 
survive Mr. Glegg, and talk eulogistically of him as a man 
who might have his weaknesses, but who had done the right 


BOY AND GIRL 


135 


thing by her, notwithstanding his numerous poor relations; 
to have sums of interest coming in more frequently, and 
secrete it in various corners, baffling to the most ingenious 
of thieves (for, to Mrs. Glegg’s mind, banks and strong¬ 
boxes would have nullified the pleasure of property; she 
might as well have taken her food in capsules); finally, to 
be looked up to by her own family and the neighborhood, 
so as no woman can ever hope to be who has not the 
preterite and present dignity comprised in being a “ widow 
well left,” — all this made a flattering and conciliatory view 
of the future. So that when good Mr. Glegg, restored to 
good humor by much hoeing, and moved by the sight of his 
wife’s empty chair, with her knitting rolled up in the corner, 
went upstairs to her, and observed that the bell had been 
tolling for poor Mr. Morton, Mrs. Glegg answered magnani¬ 
mously, quite as if she had been an uninjured \yoman: “ Ah! 
then, there’ll be a good business for somebody to take to.” 

Baxter had been open at least eight hours by this time, 
for it was nearly five o’clock; and if people are to quarrel 
often, it follows as a corollary that their quarrels cannot be 
protracted beyond certain limits. 

Mr. and Mrs. Glegg talked quite amicably about the Tul- 
livers that evening. Mr. Glegg went the length of admitting 
that Tulliver was a sad man for getting into hot water, and 
was like enough to run through his property; and Mrs. 
Glegg, meeting this acknowledgment half-way, declared that 
it was beneath her to take notice of such a man’s conduct, 
and that, for her sister’s sake, she would let him keep the 
five hundred a while longer, for when she put it out on a 
mortgage she should only get four per cent. 


136 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


CHAPTER XIII 

MR. TULLIVER FURTHER ENTANGLES THE SKEIN OF LIFE 

O WING to this new adjustment of Mrs. Glegg’s thoughts, 
Mrs. Pullet found her task of mediation the next day 
surprisingly easy. Mrs. Glegg, indeed, checked her rather 
sharply for thinking it would be necessary to tell her elder 
sister what was the right mode of behavior in family mat¬ 
ters. Mrs. Pullet’s argument, that it would look ill in the 
neighborhood if people should have it in their power to say 
that there was a quarrel in the family, was particularly of¬ 
fensive. If the family name never suffered except through 
Mrs. Glegg, Mrs. Pullet might lay her head on her pillow in 
perfect confidence. 

“ It’s not to be expected, I suppose,” observed Mrs. 
Glegg, by way of winding up the subject, “ as I shall go to 
the mill again before Bessy comes to see me, or as I shall 
go and fall down on my knees to Mr. Tulliver, and ask 
his pardon for showing him favors; but I shall bear no 
malice, and when Mr. Tulliver speaks civil to me, I’ll 
speak civil to him. Nobody has any call to tell me what’s 
becoming.” 

Finding it unnecessary to plead for the Tullivers, it was 
natural that aunt Pullet should relax a little in her anxiety 
for them, and recur to the annoyance she had suffered yes¬ 
terday from the offspring of that apparently ill-fated house. 
Mrs. Glegg heard a circumstantial narrative, to which Mr. 
Pullet’s remarkable memory furnished some items; and 
while aunt Pullet pitied poor Bessy’s bad luck with her chil¬ 
dren, and expressed a half-formed project of paying for 
Maggie’s being sent to a distant boarding-school, which 
would not prevent her being so brown, but might tend to 
subdue some other vices in her, aunt Glegg blamed Bessy 
for her weakness, and appealed to all witnesses who should 
be living when the Tulliver children had turned out ill, that 
she, Mrs. Glegg, had always said how it would be from the 


BOY AND GIRL 137 

very first, observing that it was wonderful to herself how all 
her words came true. 

“ Then I may call and tell Bessy you’ll bear no malice, and 
everything be as it was before? ” Mrs. Bullet said, just be¬ 
fore parting. 

“ Yes, you may, Sophy,” said Mrs. Glegg; “ you may tell 
Mr. Tulliver, and Bessy too, as I’m not going to behave 
ill because folks behave ill to me; I know it’s my place, as 
the eldest, to set an example in every respect, and I do it. 
Nobody can say different of me, if they’ll keep to the 
truth.” 

Mrs. Glegg being in this state of satisfaction in her own 
lofty magnanimity, I leave you to judge what effect was 
produced on her by the reception of a short letter from Mr. 
Tulliver that very evening, after Mrs. Pullet’s departure, in¬ 
forming her that she needn’t trouble her mind about her five 
hundred pounds, for it should be paid back to her in the 
course of the next month at farthest, together with the in¬ 
terest due thereon until the time of payment. And further¬ 
more, that Mr. Tulliver had no wish to behave uncivilly to 
Mrs. Glegg, and she was welcome to his house whenever 
she liked to come, but he desired no favors from her, either 
for himself or his children. 

It was poor Mrs. Tulliver who had hastened this catas¬ 
trophe, entirely through that irrepressible hopefulness of 
hers which led her to expect that similar causes may at any 
time produce different results. It had very often occurred 
in her experience that Mr. Tulliver had done something be¬ 
cause other people had said he was not able to do it, or had 
pitied him for his supposed inability, or in any other way 
piqued his pride; stiff, she thought to-day, if she told him 
when he came in to tea that sister Pullet was gone to try 
and make everything up with sister Glegg, so that he needn’t 
think about paying in the money, it would give a cheerful 
effect to the meal. Mr. Tulliver had never slackened in his 
resolve to raise the money, but now he at once determined 
to write a letter to Mrs. Glegg, which should cut off all pos¬ 
sibility of mistake. Mrs. Pullet gone to beg and pray for 


138 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


him indeed! Mr. Tulliver did not willingly write a letter, 
and found the relation between spoken and written lan¬ 
guage, briefly known as spelling, one of the most puzzling 
things in this puzzling world. Nevertheless, like all fervid 
writing, the task was done in less time than usual, and if the 
spelling differed from Mrs. Glegg’s,— why, she belonged, 
like himself, to a generation with whom spelling was a mat¬ 
ter of private judgment. 

Mrs. Glegg did not alter her will in consequence of this 
letter, and cut off the Tulliver children from their sixth and 
seventh share in her thousand pounds; for she had her prin¬ 
ciples. No one must be able to say of her when she was dead 
that she had not divided her money with perfect fairness 
among her own kin. In the matter of wills, personal quali¬ 
ties were subordinate to the great fundamental fact of 
blood; and to be determined in the distribution of your 
property by caprice, and not make your legacies bear a 
direct ratio to degrees of kinship, was a prospective disgrace 
that would have embittered her life. This had always been 
a principle in the Dodson family; it was one form of that 
sense of honor and rectitude which was a proud tradition in 
such families, — a tradition which has been the salt of our 
provincial society. 

But though the letter could not shake Mrs. Glegg’s prin¬ 
ciples, it made the family breach much more difficult to 
mend; and as to the effect it produced on Mrs. Glegg’s opin¬ 
ion of Mr. Tulliver, she begged to be understood from that 
time forth that she had nothing whatever to say about him; 
his state of mind, apparently, was too corrupt for her to 
contemplate it for a moment. It was not until the evening 
before Tom went to school, at the beginning of August, that 
Mrs. Glegg paid a visit to her sister Tulliver, sitting in her 
gig all the while, and showing her displeasure by markedly 
abstaining from all advice and criticism; for, as she observed 
to her sister Deane, “ Bessy must bear the consequence o’ 
having such a husband, though I’m sorry for her,” and Mrs. 
Deane agreed that Bessy was pitiable. 

That evening Tom observed to Maggie: “ Oh my! Maggie, 


BOY AND GIRL 139 

aunt Glegg’s beginning to come again; I'm glad I’m going to 
school. You’ll catch it all now! ” 

Maggie was already so full of sorrow at the thought of 
Tom’s going away from her, that this playful exultation of 
his seemed very unkind, and she cried herself to sleep that 
night. 

Mr. Tulliver’s prompt procedure entailed on him further 
promptitude in finding the convenient person who was de¬ 
sirous of lending five hundred pounds on bond. “ It must 
be no client of Wakem’s,” he said to himself; and yet at the 
end of a fortnight it turned out to the contrary; not because 
Mr. Tulliver’s will was feeble, but because external fact was 
stronger. Wakem’s client was the only convenient person 
to be found. Mr. Tulliver had a destiny as well as (Edipus, 
and in this case he might plead, like (Edipus, that his deed 
was inflicted on him rather than committed by him. 



BOOK II—SCHOOI^TIME 

CHAPTER I 
tom’s “ FIRST HALF ” 

T OM TULLIVER’S sufferings during the first quarter he 
was at King’s Lorton, under the distinguished care of 
the Rev. Walter Stelling, were rather severe. At Mr. Jacob’s 
academy life had not presented itself to him as a difficult 
problem; there were plenty of fellows to play with, and Tom 
being good at all active games, — fighting especially, — had 
that precedence among them which appeared to him in¬ 
separable from the personality of Tom Tulliver. Mr. Jacobs 
himself, familiarly known as Old Goggles, from his habit of 
wearing spectacles, imposed no painful awe; and if it was 
the property of snuffy old hypocrites like him to write like 
copperplate and surround their signatures with arabesques, 
to spell without forethought, and to spout “ my name is 
Norval ” without bungling, Tom, for his part, was glad he 
was not in danger of those mean accomplishments. He was 
not going to be a snuffy schoolmaster, he, but a substantial 
man, like his father, who used to go hunting when he was 
140 


SCHOOL-TIME 


141 


younger, and rode a capital black mare, — as pretty a bit of 
horse-flesh as ever you saw; Tom had heard what her points 
were a hundred times. He meant to go hunting too, and to 
be generally respected. When people were grown up, he 
considered, nobody inquired about their writing and spell¬ 
ing; when he was a man, he should be master of everything, 
and do just as he liked. It had been very difficult for him 
to reconcile himself to the idea that his school-time was to 
be prolonged and that he was not to be brought up to his 
father’s business, which he had always thought extremely 
pleasant; for it was nothing but riding about, giving orders, 
and going to market; and he thought that a clergyman 
would give him a great many Scripture lessons, and prob¬ 
ably make him learn the Gospel and Epistle on a Sunday, 
as well as the Collect. But in the absence of specific infor¬ 
mation, it was impossible for him to imagine that school and 
a schoolmaster would be something entirely different from 
the academy of Mr. Jacobs. So, not to be at a deficiency, in 
case of his finding genial companions, he had taken care to 
carry with him a small box of percussion-caps; not that 
there was anything particular to be done with them, but 
they would serve to impress strange boys with a sense of his 
familiarity with guns. Thus poor Tom, though he saw very 
clearly through Maggie’s illusions, was not without illusions 
of his own, which were to be cruelly dissipated by his en¬ 
larged experience at King’s Lorton. 

He had not been there a fortnight before it was evident 
to him that life, complicated not only with the Latin gram¬ 
mar but with a new standard of English pronunciation, was 
a very difficult business, made all the more obscure by a 
thick mist of bashfulness. Tom, as you have observed, was 
never an exception among boys for ease of address; but the 
difficulty of enunciating a monosyllable in reply to Mr. or 
Mrs. Stelling was so great, that he even dreaded to be asked 
at table whether he would have more pudding. As to the 
percussion-caps, he had almost resolved, in the bitterness of 
his heart, that he would throw them into a neighboring 
pond; for not only was he the solitary pupil, but he began 


142 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


even to have a certain scepticism about guns, and a general 
sense that his theory of life was undermined. For Mr. Stel- 
ling thought nothing of guns, or horses either, apparently; 
and yet. it was impossible for Tom to despise Mr. Stelling as 
he had despised Old Goggles. If there were anything that 
was not thoroughly genuine about Mr. Stelling, it lay quite 
beyond Tom’s power to detect it; it is only by a wide com¬ 
parison of facts that the wisest full-grown man can distin¬ 
guish well-rolled barrels from more supernal thunder. 

Mr. Stelling was a well-sized, broad-chested man, not yet 
thirty, with flaxen hair standing erect, and large lightish- 
gray eyes, which were always very wide open; he had a 
sonorous bass voice, and an air of defiant self-confidence in¬ 
clining to brazenness. He had entered on his career with 
great vigor, and intended to make a considerable impression 
on his fellow-men. The Rev. Walter Stelling was not a man 
who would remain among the “ inferior clergy ” all his life. 
He had a true British determination to push his way in the 
world, — as a schoolmaster, in the first place, for there were 
capital masterships of grammar-schools to be had, and Mr. 
Stelling meant to have one of them; but as a preacher also, 
for he meant always to preach in a striking manner, so as to 
have his congregation swelled by admirers from neighboring 
parishes, and to produce a great sensation whenever he took 
occasional duty for a brother clergyman of minor gifts. The 
style of preaching he had chosen was the extemporaneous, 
which was held little short of the miraculous in rural parishes 
like King’s Lorton. Some passages of Massillon and Bour- 
daloue, which he knew by heart, were really very effective 
when rolled out in Mr. Stelling’s deepest tones; but as com¬ 
paratively feeble appeals of his own were delivered in the 
same loud and impressive manner, they were often thought 
quite as striking by his hearers. Mr. Stelling’s doctrine was 
of no particular school; if anything, it had a tinge of evan¬ 
gelicalism, for that was “ the telling thing ” just then in the 
diocese to which King’s Lorton belonged. In short, Mr. 
Stelling was a man who meant to rise in his profession, and 
to rise by merit, clearly, since he had no interest beyond 


SCHOOL-TIME 


143 


what might be promised by a problematic relationship to a 
great lawyer who had not yet become Lord Chancellor. A 
clergyman who has such vigorous intentions naturally gets 
a little into debt at starting; it is not to be expected that 
he will live in the meagre style of a man who means to be a 
poor curate all his life; and if the few hundreds Mr. Timp- 
son advanced toward his daughter’s fortune did not suffice 
for the purchase of handsome furniture, together with a 
stock of wine, a grand piano, and the laying out of a supe¬ 
rior flower-garden, it followed in the most rigorous manner, 
either that these things must be procured by some other 
means, or else that the Rev. Mr. Stelling must go without 
them, which last alternative would be an absurd procrasti¬ 
nation of the fruits of success, where success was certain. 
Mr. Stelling was so broad-chested and resolute that he felt 
equal to anything; he would become celebrated by shaking 
the consciences of his hearers, and he would by and by edit 
a Greek play, and invent several new readings. He had not 
yet selected the play, for having been married little more 
than two years, his leisure time had been much occupied 
with attentions to Mrs. Stelling; but he had told that fine 
woman what he meant to do some day, and she felt great 
confidence in her husband, as a man who understood every¬ 
thing of that sort. 

But the immediate step to future success was to bring on 
Tom Tulliver during this first half-year; for, by a singular 
coincidence, there had been some negotiation concerning an¬ 
other pupil from the same neighborhood, and it might fur¬ 
ther a decision in Mr. Stelling’s favor, if it were understood 
that young Tulliver, who, Mr. Stelling observed in conjugal 
privacy, was rather a rough cub, had made prodigious prog¬ 
ress in a short time. It was on this ground that he was 
severe with Tom about his lessons; he was clearly a boy 
whose powers would never be developed through the me¬ 
dium of the Latin grammar, without the application of 
some sternness. Not that Mr. Stelling was a harsh- 
tempered or unkind man; quite the contrary. He was 
jocose with Tom at table, and corrected his provincialisms 


144 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


and his deportment in the most playful manner; but poor 
Tom was only the more cowed and confused by this double 
novelty, for he had never been used to jokes at all like Mr. 
Stelling’s; and for the first time in his life he had a painful 
sense that he was all wrong somehow. When Mr. Stelling 
said, as the roast-beef was being uncovered, “ Now, Tulli- 
ver! which would you rather decline, roast-beef or the Latin 
for it? ” Tom, to whom in his coolest moments a pun would 
have been a hard nut, was thrown into a state of embar¬ 
rassed alarm that made everything dim to him except the 
feeling that he would rather not have anything to do with 
Latin; of course he answered, “ Roast-beef,” whereupon 
there followed much laughter and some practical joking 
with the plates, from which Tom gathered that he had in 
some mysterious way refused beef, and, in fact, made him¬ 
self appear “ a silly.” If he could have seen a fellow-pupil 
undergo these painful operations and survive them in good 
spirits, he might sooner have taken them as a matter of 
course. But there are two expensive forms of education, 
either of which a parent may procure for his son by sending 
him as solitary pupil to a clergyman: one is the enjoyment 
of the reverend gentleman’s undivided neglect; the other is 
the endurance of the reverend gentleman’s undivided atten¬ 
tion. It was the latter privilege for which Mr. Tulliver paid 
a high price in Tom’s initiatory months at King’s Lorton. 

That respectable miller and maltster had left Tom behind, 
and driven homeward in a state of great mental satisfaction. 
He considered that it was a happy moment for him when he 
had thought of asking Riley’s advice about a tutor for Tom. 
Mr. Stelling’s eyes were so wide open, and he talked in such 
an off-hand, matter-of-fact way, answering every difficult, 
slow remark of Mr. Tulliver’s with, “ I see, my good sir, I 
see ”; “ To be sure, to be sure ”; “ You want your son to be 
a man who will make his way in the world,” — that Mr. 
Tulliver was delighted to find in him a clergyman whose 
knowledge was so applicable to the every-day affairs of this 
life. Except Counsellor Wylde, whom he had heard at the 
last sessions, Mr. Tulliver thought the Rev. Mr. Stelling was 


SCHOOL-TIME 


145 


the shrewdest fellow he had ever met with, — not unlike 
Wylde, in fact, he had the same way of sticking his thumbs 
in the armholes of his waistcoat. Mr. Tulliver was not by 
any means an exception in mistaking brazenness for shrewd¬ 
ness; most laymen thought Stelling shrewd, and a man of 
remarkable powers generally; it was chiefly by his clerical 
brethren that ‘he was considered rather a dull fellow. Mr. 
Tulliver had no doubt this first-rate man was acquainted 
with every branch of information, and knew exactly what 
Tom must learn in order to become a match for the lawyers, 
which poor Mr. Tulliver himself did not know, and so was 
necessarily thrown for self-direction on this wide kind of in¬ 
ference. It is hardly fair to laugh at him, for I have known 
much more highly instructed persons than he make infer¬ 
ences quite as wide, and not at all wiser. 

As for Mrs. Tulliver, finding that Mrs. Stelling’s views as 
to the airing of linen and the frequent recurrence of hunger 
in a growing boy entirely coincided with her own; moreover, 
that Mrs. Stelling, though so young a woman, and only 
anticipating her second confinement, had gone through very 
nearly the same experience as herself with regard to the be¬ 
havior and fundamental character of the monthly nurse, — 
she expressed great contentment to her husband, when they 
drove away, at leaving Tom with a woman who, in spite of 
her youth, seemed quite sensible and motherly, and asked 
advice as prettily as could be. 

“ They must be very well off, though,” said Mrs. Tulliver, 
“ for everything’s as nice as can be all over the house, and 
that watered silk she had on cost a pretty penny. Sister 
Pullet has got one like it.” 

“ Ah,” said Mr. Tulliver, “ he’s got some income besides 
the curacy, I reckon. Perhaps her father allows ’em some¬ 
thing. There’s Tom ’ull be another hundred to him, and 
not much trouble either, by his own account; he says teach¬ 
ing comes natural to him. That’s wonderful, now,” added 
Mr. Tulliver, turning his head on one side, and giving his 
horse a meditative tickling on the flank. 

Perhaps it was because teaching came naturally to Mr. 


146 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


Stelling, that he set about it with that uniformity of method 
and independence of circumstances which distinguish the 
actions of animals understood to be under the immediate 
teaching of nature. Mr. Broderip’s amiable beaver, as that 
charming naturalist tells us, busied himself as earnestly in 
constructing a dam, in a room up three pair of stairs in 
London, as if he had been laying his foundation in a stream 
or lake in Upper Canada. It was “ Binny’s ” function to 
build; the absence of water or of possible progeny was an 
accident for which he was not accountable. With the same 
unerring instinct Mr. Stelling set to work at his natural 
method of instilling the Eton Grammar and Euclid into the 
mind of Tom Tulliver. This, he considered, was the only 
basis of solid instruction; all other means of education were 
mere charlatanism, and could produce nothing better than 
smatterers. Fixed on this firm basis, a man might observe 
the display of various or special knowledge made by irregu¬ 
larly educated people with a pitying smile; all that sort of 
thing was very well, but it was impossible these people 
could form sound opinions. In holding this conviction Mr. 
Stelling was not biassed, as some tutors have been, by the 
excessive accuracy or extent of his own scholarship; and as 
to his views about Euclid, no opinion could have been freer 
from personal partiality. Mr. Stelling was very far from 
being led astray by enthusiasm, either religious or intel¬ 
lectual; on the other hand, he had no secret belief that 
everything was humbug. He thought religion was a very 
excellent thing, and Aristotle a great authority, and dean¬ 
eries and preibends useful institutions, and Great Britain the 
providential bulwark of Protestantism, and faith in the un¬ 
seen a great support to afflicted minds; he believed in all 
these things, as a Swiss hotel-keeper believes in the beauty 
of the scenery around him, and in the pleasure it gives to 
artistic visitors. And in the same way Mr. Stelling believed 
in his method of education; he had no doubt that he was 
doing the very best thing for Mr. Tulliver’s boy. Of course, 
when the miller talked of “ mapping ” and “ summing ” in a 
vague and diffident manner, Mr. Stelling had set his mind 


SCHOOL-TIME 


147 


at rest by an assurance that he understood what was 
w r anted; for how was it possible the good man could form 
any reasonable judgment about the matter? Mr. Stelling’s 
duty was to teach the lad in the only right way, — indeed 
he knew no other; he had not wasted his time in the acquire¬ 
ment of anything abnormal. 

He very soon set down poor Tom as a thoroughly stupid 
lad; for though by hard labor he could get particular declen¬ 
sions into his brain, anything so abstract as the relation be¬ 
tween cases and terminations could by no means get such 
a lodgment there as to enable him to recognize a chance 
genitive or dative. This struck Mr. Stelling as something 
more than natural stupidity; he suspected obstinacy, or at 
any rate indifference, and lectured Tom severely on his 
want of thorough application. “ You feel no interest in 
what you’re doing, sir,” Mr. Stelling would say, and the 
reproach was painfully true. Tom had never found any 
difficulty in discerning a pointer from a setter, when once 
he had been told the distinction, and his perceptive powers 
were not at all deficient. I fancy they were quite as strong 
as those of the Rev. Mr. Stelling; for Tom could predict 
with accuracy what number of horses were cantering behind 
him, he could throw a stone right into the centre of a given 
ripple, he could guess to a fraction how many lengths of his 
stick it would take to reach across the playground, and could 
draw almost perfect squares on his slate without any meas¬ 
urement. But Mr. Stelling took no note of these things; 
he only observed that Tom’s faculties failed him before the 
abstractions hideously symbolized to him in the pages of 
the Eton Grammar, and that he was in a state bordering 
on idiocy with regard to the demonstration that two given 
triangles must be equal, though he could discern with great 
promptitude and certainty the fact that they were equal. 
Whence Mr. Stelling concluded that Tom’s brain, being 
peculiarly impervious to etymology and demonstrations, was 
peculiarly in need of being ploughed and harrowed by these 
patent implements; it was his favorite metaphor, that the 
classics and geometry constituted that culture of the mind 


148 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


which prepared it for the reception of any subsquent crop. 
I say nothing against Mr. Stelling’s theory; if we are to have 
one regimen for all minds, his seems to me as good as any 
other. I only know it turned out as uncomfortably for Tom 
Tulliver as if he had been plied with cheese in order to 
remedy a gastric weakness which prevented him from di¬ 
gesting it. 

Tom Tulliver, being abundant in no form of speech, did 
not use any metaphor to declare his views as to the nature 
of Latin; he never called it an instrument of torture; and 
it was not until he had got on some way in the next half- 
year, and in the Delectus, that he was advanced enough to 
call it a “ bore ” and “ beastly stuff.” At present, in rela¬ 
tion to this demand that he should learn Latin declensions 
and conjugations, Tom was in a state of as blank unimagi¬ 
nativeness concerning the cause and tendency of his suffer¬ 
ings, as if he had been an innocent shrewmouse imprisoned 
in the split trunk of an ash-tree in order to cure lameness 
in cattle. It is doubtless almost incredible to instructed 
minds of the present day that a boy of twelve, not be¬ 
longing strictly to “ the masses,” who are now understood 
to have the monopoly of mental darkness, should have had 
no distinct idea how there came to be such a thing as Latin 
on this earth; yet so it was with Tom. It would have taken 
a long while to make conceivable to him that there ever 
existed a people who bought and sold sheep and oxen, and 
transacted the every-day affairs of life, through the medium 
of this language; and still longer to make him understand 
why he should be called upon to learn it, when its connec¬ 
tion with those affairs had become entirely latent. So far 
as Tom had gained any acquaintance with the Romans at 
Mr. Jacob’s academy, his knowledge was strictly correct, 
but it went no farther than the fact that they were “ in the 
New Testament ” ; and Mr. Stelling was not the man to 
enfeeble and emasculate his pupil’s mind by simplifying 
and explaining, or to reduce the tonic effect of etymology by 
mixing it with smattering, extraneous information, such as 
is given to girls. 


SCHOOL-TIME 


149 


Yet, strange to say, under this vigorous treatment Tom 
became more like a girl than he had ever been in his life be¬ 
fore. He had a large share of pride, which had hitherto 
found itself very comfortable in the world, despising Old 
Goggles, and reposing in the sense of unquestioned rights; 
but now this same pride met with nothing but bruises and 
crushings. Tom was too clear-sighted not to be aware that 
Mr. Stelling’s standard of things was quite different, was 
certainly something higher in the eyes of the world than that 
of the people he had been living amongst, and that, brought 
in contact with it, he, Tom Tulliver, appeared uncouth and 
stupid; he was by no means indifferent to this, and his 
pride got into an uneasy condition which quite nullified his 
boyish self-satisfaction, and gave him something of the girl’s 
susceptibility. He was of a very firm, not to say obstinate, 
disposition, but there was no brute-like rebellion and reck¬ 
lessness in his nature; the human sensibilities predominated, 
and if it had occurred to him that he could enable himself to 
show some quickness at his lessons, and so acquire Mr. 
Stelling’s approbation, by standing on one leg for an in¬ 
convenient length of time, or rapping his head moderately 
against the wall, or any voluntary action of that sort, he 
would certainly have tried it. But no; Tom had never 
heard that these measures would brighten the understand¬ 
ing, or strengthen the verbal memory; and he was not given 
to hypothesis and experiment. It did occur to him that he 
could perhaps get some help by praying for it; but as the 
prayers he said every evening were forms learned by heart, 
he rather shrank from the novelty and irregularity of in¬ 
troducing an extempore passage on a topic of petition for 
which he was not aware of any precedent. But one day, 
when he had broken down, for the fifth time, in the supines 
of the third conjugation, and Mr. Stelling, convinced that 
this must be carelessness, since it transcended the bounds 
of possible stupidity, had lectured him very seriously, point¬ 
ing out that if he failed to seize the present golden opportu¬ 
nity of learning supines, he would have to regret it when he 
became a man, — Tom, more miserable than usual, de- 


150 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


termined to try his sole resource; and that evening, after 
his usual form of prayer for his parents and “ little sister ” 
(he had begun to pray for Maggie when she was a baby), 
and that he might be able always to keep God’s command¬ 
ments, he added, in the same low whisper, “ and please to 
make me always remember my Latin.” He paused a little 
to consider how he should pray about Euclid — whether he 
should ask to see what it meant, or whether there was any 
other mental state which would be more applicable to the 
case. But at last he added: “ And make Mr. Stelling say I 
sha’n’t do Euclid any more. Amen.” 

The fact that he got through his supines without mistake 
the next day, encouraged him to persevere in this appendix 
to his prayers, and neutralized any scepticism that might 
have arisen from Mr. Stelling’s continued demand for Euclid. 
But his faith broke down under the apparent absence of 
all help when he got into the irregular verbs. It seemed 
clear that Tom’s despair under the caprices of the present 
tense did not constitute a nodus worthy of interference, and 
since this was the climax of his difficulties, where was the 
use of praying for help any longer? He made up his mind 
to this conclusion in one of his dull, lonely evenings, which 
he spent in the study, preparing his lessons for the morrow. 
His eyes were apt to get dim over the page, tliough he hated 
crying, and was ashamed of it; he couldn’t help thinking 
with some affection even of Spouncer, whom he used to 
fight and quarrel with; he would have felt at home with 
Spouncer, and in a condition of superiority. And then the 
mill, and the river, and Yap pricking up his ears, ready to 
obey the least sign when Tom said, “Hoigh! ” would all 
come before him in a sort of calenture, when his fingers 
played absently in his pocket with his great knife and his 
coil of whipcord, and other relics of the past. Tom, as I 
said, had never been so much like a girl in his life before, 
and at that epoch of irregular verbs his spirit was further 
depressed by a new means of mental development which 
had been thought of for him out of -school hours. Mrs. 
Stelling had lately had her second baby, and as nothing 


SCHOOL-TIME 


151 


could be more salutary for a boy than to feel himself useful, 
Mrs. Stelling considered she was doing Tom a service by 
setting him to watch the little cherub Laura while the 
nurse was occupied with the sickly baby. It was quite a 
pretty employment for Tom to take little Laura out in the 
sunniest hour of the autumn day; it would help to make 
him feel that Lorton Parsonage was a home for him, and 
that he was one of the family. The little cherub Laura, 
not being an accomplished walker at present, had a ribbon 
fastened round her waist, by which Tom held her as if she 
had been a little dog during the minutes in which she chose 
to walk; but as these were rare, he was for the most part 
carrying this fine child round and round the garden, within 
sight of Mrs. Stelling’s window, according to orders. If any 
one considers this unfair and even oppressive toward Tom, I 
beg him to consider that there are feminine virtues which 
are with difficulty combined, even if they are not incom¬ 
patible. When the wife of a poor curate contrives, under 
all her disadvantages, to dress extremely well, and to have 
a style of coiffure which requires that her nurse shall occa¬ 
sionally officiate as lady’s-maid; when, moreover, her dinner¬ 
parties and her drawing-room show that effort at elegance 
and completeness of appointment to which ordinary women 
might imagine a large income necessary, it would be un¬ 
reasonable to expect of her that she should employ a second 
nurse, or even act as a nurse herself. Mr. Stelling knew 
better; he saw that his wife did wonders already, and was 
proud of her. It was certainly not the best thing in the 
world for young Tulliver’s gait to carry a heavy child, but 
he had plenty of exercise in long walks with himself, and 
next half-year Mr. Stelling would see about having a drilling- 
master. Among the many means whereby Mr. Stelling in¬ 
tended to be more fortunate than the bulk of his fellow- 
men, he had entirely given up that of having his own way 
in his own house. What then? He had married “ as kind a 
little soul as ever breathed,” according to Mr. Riley, who 
had been acquainted with Mrs. Stelling’s blond ringlets and 
smiling demeanor throughout her maiden life, and on the 


152 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


strength of that knowledge would have been ready any 
day to pronounce that whatever domestic differences might 
arise in her married life must be entirely Mr. Stelling’s 
fault. 

If Tom had had a worse disposition, he would certainly 
have hated the little cherub Laura, but he was too kind- 
hearted a lad for that; there was top much in him of the 
fibre that turns to true manliness, and to protecting pity 
for the weak. I am afraid he hated Mrs. Stelling, and con¬ 
tracted a lasting dislike to pale blond ringlets and broad 
plaits, as directly associated with haughtiness of manner 
and a frequent reference to other people’s “ duty.” But 
he couldn’t help playing with little Laura, and liking to 
amuse her; he even sacrificed his percussion-caps for her 
sake, in despair of their ever serving a greater purpose, — 
thinking the small flash and bang would delight her, and 
thereby drawing down on himself a rebuke from Mrs. Stel¬ 
ling for teaching her child to play with fire. Laura was a sort 
of playfellow — and oh, how Tom longed for playfellows! 
In his secret heart he yearned to have Maggie with him, and 
was almost ready to dote on her exasperating acts of for¬ 
getfulness; though, when he was at home, he always rep¬ 
resented it as a great favor on his part to let Maggie trot 
by his side on his pleasure excursions. 

And before this dreary half-year was ended, Maggie ac¬ 
tually came. Mrs. Stelling had given a general invitation 
for the little girl to come and stay with her brother; so when 
Mr. Tulliver drove over to King’s Lorton late in October, 
Maggie came too, with the sense that she was taking a 
great journey, and beginning to see the world. It was Mr. 
Tulliver’s first visit to see Tom, for the lad must learn not 
to think too much about home. 

“ Well, my lad,” he said to Tom, when Mr. Stelling had 
left the room to announce the arrival to his wife, and Maggie 
had begun to kiss Tom freely, “you look rarely! School 
agrees with you.” 

Tom wished he had looked rather ill. 

“I don’t think I am well, father,” said Tom; “I wish 


SCHOOL-TIME 153 

you’d ask Mr. Stelling not to let me do Euclid; it brings on 
the toothache, I think.” 

(The toothache was the only malady to which Tom had 
ever been subject.) 

“ Euclid, my lad, — why, what’s that ? ” said Mr. Tul- 
liver. 

“ Oh, I don’t know; it’s definitions, and axioms, and tri¬ 
angles, and things. It’s a book I’ve got to learn in — there’s 
no sense in it.” 

“ Go, go! ” said Mr. Tulliver, reprovingly; “ you mustn’t 
say so. You must learn what your master tells you. He 
knows what it’s right for you to learn.” 

“ VU help you now, Tom,” said Maggie, with a little air 
of patronizing consolation. “ I’m come to stay ever so long, 
if Mrs. Stelling asks me. I’ve brought my box and my 
pinafores, haven’t I, father? ” 

“ You help me, you silly little thing! ” said Tom, in such 
high spirits at this announcement that he quite enjoyed the 
idea of confounding Maggie by showing her a page of Euclid. 
“ I should like to see you doing one of my lessons! Why, 
I learn Latin, too! Girls never learn such things. They’re 
too silly.” 

“I know what Latin is very well,” said Maggie, con¬ 
fidently. “ Latin’s a language. There are Latin words in 
the Dictionary. There’s bonus, a gift.” 

“Now, you’re just wrong there, Miss Maggie! ” said 
Tom, secretly astonished. “You think you’re very wise! 
But ' bonus ’ means ‘ good,’ as it happens, — bonus, bona, 
bonum.” 

“ Well, that’s no reason why it shouldn’t mean ‘ gift,’ ” 
said Maggie, stoutly. “ It may mean several things; almost 
every word does. There’s ‘ lawn,’ — it means the grass- 
plot, as well as the stuff pocket-handkerchiefs are made of.” 

“ Well done, little ’un,” said Mr. Tulliver, laughing, while 
Tom felt rather disgusted with Maggie’s knowingness, though 
beyond measure cheerful at the thought that she was going 
to stay with him. Her conceit would soon be overawed by 
the actual inspection of his books. 


154 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


Mrs. Stelling, in her pressing invitation, did not mention 
a longer time than a week for Maggie’s stay; ibut Mr. 
Stelling, who took her between his knees, and asked her 
where she stole her dark eyes from, insisted that she must 
stay a fortnight. Maggie thought Mr. Stelling was a charm¬ 
ing man, and Mr. Tulliver was quite proud-to leave his 
little wench where she would have an opportunity of show¬ 
ing her cleverness to appreciating strangers. So it was 
agreed that she should not be fetched home till the end 
of the fortnight. 

“ Now, then, come with me into the study, Maggie,” said 
Tom, as their father drove away. “ What do you shake 
and toss your head now for, you silly? ” he continued; for 
though her hair was now under a new dispensation, and 
was brushed smoothly behind her ears, she seemed still in 
imagination to be tossing it out of her eyes. “ It makes you 
look as if you were crazy.” 

“ Oh, I can’t help it,” said Maggie, impatiently. “ Don’t 
tease me, Tom. Oh, what books! ” she exclaimed, as she 
saw the bookcases in the study. “ How I should like to 
have as many books as that! ” 

“ Why, you couldn’t read one of ’em,” said Tom, trium¬ 
phantly. “ They’re all Latin.” 

“ No, they aren’t,” said Maggie. “ I can read the back of 
this, — History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman 
Empire 

“Well, what does that mean? You don’t know,” said 
Tom, wagging his head. 

“ But I could soon find out,” said Maggie, scornfully. 

“ Why, how? ” 

“ I should look inside, and see what it was about.” 

“ You’d better not, Miss Maggie,” said Tom, seeing her 
hand on the volume. “ Mr. Stelling lets nobody touch his 
books without leave, and I shall catch it, if you take it out.” 

“ Oh, very well. Let me see all your books, then,” said 
Maggie, turning to throw her arms round Tom’s neck, and 
rub his cheek with her small round nose. 

Tom, in the gladness of his heart at having dear old 


SCHOOL-TIME 


155 


Maggie to dispute with and crow over again, seized her 
round the waist, and began to jump with her round the 
large library table. Away they jumped with more and 
more vigor, till Maggie’s hair flew from behind her ears, 
and twirled about like an animated mop. But the revolu¬ 
tions round the table became more and more irregular in 
their sweep, till at last reaching Mr. Stelling’s reading-stand, 
they sent it thundering down with its heavy lexicons to the 
floor. Happily it was the ground-floor, and the study was a 
one-storied wing to the house, so that the downfall made no 
alarming resonance, though Tom stood dizzy and aghast 
for a few minutes, dreading the appearance of Mr. or Mrs. 
Stelling. 

“ Oh, I say, Maggie,” said Tom at last, lifting up the 
stand, “ we must keep quiet here, you know. If we break 
anything Mrs. Stelling’ll make us cry peccavi.” 

“ What’s that?” said Maggie. 

“ Oh, it’s the Latin for a good scolding,” said Tom, not 
without some pride in his knowledge. 

“Is she a cross woman?” said Maggie. 

" I believe you! ” said Tom, with an emphatic nod. 

“ I think all women are crosser than men,” said Maggie. 
“ Aunt Glegg’s a great deal crosser than uncle Glegg, and 
mother scolds me more than father does.” 

“ Well, you’ll be a woman some day,” said Tom, “ so you 
needn’t talk.” 

“ But I shall be a clever woman,” said Maggie, with a 
toss. 

“ Oh, I dare say, and a nasty conceited thing. Every¬ 
body’ll hate you.” 

“ But you oughtn’t to hate me, Tom; it’ll be very wicked 
of you, for I shall be your sister.” 

“ Yes, but if you’re a nasty disagreeable thing I shall hate 
you.” 

“ Oh, but, Tom, you won’t! I sha’n’t be disagreeable. I 
shall be very good to you, and I shall be good to every¬ 
body. You won’t hate me really, will you, Tom?” 

“Oh, bother! never mind! Come, it’s time for me to 


156 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


learn my lessons. See here! what I’ve got to do,” said 
Tom, drawing Maggie toward him and showing her his 
theorem, while she pushed her hair behind her ears, and 
prepared herself to prove her capability of helping him in 
Euclid. She began to read with full confidence in her own 
powers, but presently, becoming quite bewildered, her face 
flushed with irritation. It was unavoidable; she must con¬ 
fess her incompetency, and she was not fond of humiliation. 

“ It’s nonsense! ” she said, “ and very ugly stuff; nobody 
need want to make it out.” 

“ Ah, there, now, Miss Maggie! ” said Tom, drawing the 
book away, and wagging his head at her, “ you see you’re 
not so clever as you thought you were.” 

“ Oh,” said Maggie, pouting, “ I dare say I could make it 
out, if I’d learned what goes before, as you have.” 

“ But that’s what you just couldn’t, Miss Wisdom,” said 
Tom. “ For it’s all the harder when you know what goes 
before; for then you’ve got to say what definition 3 is, and 
what axiom V is. But get along with you now; I must go 
on with this. Here’s the Latin Grammar. See what you 
can make of that.” 

Maggie found the Latin Grammar quite soothing after her 
mathematical mortification; for she delighted in new words, 
and quickly found that there was an English Key at the end, 
which would make her very wise about Latin, at slight ex¬ 
pense. She presently made up her mind to skip the rules 
in the Syntax, the examples became so absorbing. These 
mysterious sentences, snatched from an unknown context, 
— like strange horns of beasts, and leaves of unknown plants, 
brought from some far-off region, — gave boundless scope 
to her imagination, and were all the more fascinating be¬ 
cause they were in a peculiar tongue of their own, which she 
could learn to interpret. It was really very interesting, the 
Latin Grammar that Tom had said no girls could learn; 
and she was proud because she found it interesting. The 
most fragmentary examples were her favorites. Mors 
omnibus est communis would have been jejune, only she 
liked to know the Latin; but the fortunate gentleman 


SCHOOL-TIME 


157 


whom every one congratulated because he had a son “ en¬ 
dowed with such a disposition ” afforded her a great deal 
of pleasant conjecture, and she was quite lost in the “ thick 
grove penetrable by no star/' when Tom called out, — 

“Now, then, Magsie, give us the Grammar! ” 

“Oh, Tom, it’s such a pretty book! ” she said, as she 
jumped out of the large arm-chair to give it him; “it’s 
much prettier than the Dictionary. I could learn Latin 
very soon. I don’t think it’s at all hard.” 

“ Oh, I know what you’ve been doing,” said Tom; “ you’ve 
been reading the English at the end. Any donkey can do 
that.” 

Tom seized the book and opened it with a determined and 
business-like air, as much as to say that he had a lesson 
to learn which no donkeys would find themselves equal to. 
Maggie, rather piqued, turned to the bookcases to amuse her¬ 
self with puzzling out the titles. 

Presently Tom called to her: “ Here, Magsie, come and 
hear if I can say this. Stand at that end of the table, 
where Mr. Stelling sits when he hears me.” 

Maggie obeyed, and took the open book. 

“ Where do you begin, Tom? ” 

“ Oh, I begin at ' Appellativa arborum,’ because I say all 
over again what I’ve been learning this week.” 

Tom sailed along pretty well for three lines; and Maggie 
was beginning to forget her office of prompter in specu¬ 
lating as to what mas could mean, which came twice over, 
when he stuck fast at Sunt etiam volucrum. 

“Don’t tell me, Maggie; Sunt etiam volucrum — Sunt 
etiam volucrum — ut ostrea, cetus -” 

“ No,” said Maggie, opening her mouth and shaking her 
head. 

“ Sunt etiam volucrum,” said Tom, very slowly, as if the 
next words might be expected to come sooner when he gave 
them this strong hint that they were waited for. 

“ C, e, u,” said Maggie, getting impatient. 

“ Oh, I know — hold your tongue,” said Tom. “ Ceu 
passer, hirundo; Ferarum — ferarum -” Tom took his 


158 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


pencil and made several hard dots with it on his book-cover 
— “ ferarum -” 

“ Oh dear, oh dear, Tom,” said Maggie, “ what a time you 
are! Ut -” 

“ Ut ostrea -” 

“ No, no,” said Maggie, “ ut tigris -” 

“ Oh yes, now I can do,” said Tom; “ it was tigris, vulpes, 
I’d forgotten: ut tigris vulpes; et Piscium.” 

With some further stammering and repetition, Tom got 
through the next few lines. 

“ Now, then,” he said, “ the next is what I’ve just learned 
for to-morrow. Give me hold of the book a minute.” 

After some whispered gabbling, assisted by the beating 
of his fist on the table, Tom returned the book. 

“ Mascula nomina in a,” he began. 

I No, Tom,” said Maggie, “ that doesn’t come next. 
It’s Nomen non creskens genittivo -” 

“ Creskens genittivo! ” exclaimed Tom, with a derisive 
laugh, for Tom had learned this omitted passage for his 
yesterday’s lesson, and a young gentleman does not re¬ 
quire an intimate or extensive acquaintance with Latin 
before he can feel the pitiable absurdity of a false quan¬ 
tity. “ Creskens genittivo! What a little silly you are, 
Maggie! ” 

“ Well, you needn’t laugh, Tom, for you didn’t remember 
it at all. I’m sure it’s spelt so; how was I to know? ” 

“Phee-e-e-h! I told you girls couldn’t learn Latin. It’s 
Nomen non crescens genitivo.” 

“ Very well, then,” said Maggie, pouting. “ I can say 
that as well as you can. And you don’t mind your stops. 
For you ought to stop twice as long at a semicolon as you 
do at a comma, and you make the longest stops where 
there ought to be no stop at all.” 

“ Oh, well, don’t chatter. Let me go on.” 

They were presently fetched to spend the rest of the 
evening in the drawing-room, and Maggie became so ani¬ 
mated with Mr. Stelling, who, she felt sure, admired her 
cleverness, that Tom was rather amazed and alarmed at 


SCHOOL-TIME 


159 


her audacity. But she was suddenly subdued by Mr. Stell- 
ing’s alluding to a little girl of whom he had heard that she 
once ran away to the gypsies. 

“What a very odd little girl that must be! ” said Mrs. 
Stelling, meaning to be playful; but a playfulness that 
turned on her supposed oddity was not at all to Maggie’s 
taste. She feared that Mr. Stelling, after all, did not 
think much of her, and went to bed in rather low spirits. 
Mrs. Stelling, she felt, looked at her as if she thought 
her hair was very ugly because it hung down straight 
behind. 

Nevertheless it was a very happy fortnight to Maggie, 
this visit to Tom. She was allowed to be in the study while 
he had his lessons, and in her various readings got very deep 
into the examples in the Latin Grammar. The astronomer 
who hated women generally caused her so much puzzling 
speculation that she one day asked Mr. Stelling if all astron¬ 
omers hated women, or whether it was only this particular 
astronomer. But forestalling his answer, she said, — 

“ I suppose it’s all astronomers; because, you know, they 
live up in high towers, and if the women came there they 
might talk and hinder them from looking at the stars.” 

Mr. Stelling liked her prattle immensely, and they were 
on the best terms. She told Tom she should like to go to 
school to Mr. Stelling, as he did, and learn just the same 
things. She knew she could do Euclid, for she had looked 
into it again, and she saw what ABC meant; they were 
the names of the lines. 

“I’m sure you couldn’t do it, now,” said Tom; “and I’ll 
just ask Mr. Stelling if you could.” 

“ I don’t mind,” said the little conceited minx, “ I’ll ask 
him myself.” 

“ Mr. Stelling,” she said, that same evening when they 
were in the drawing-room, “ couldn’t I do Euclid, and all 
Tom’s lessons, if you were to teach me instead of him? ” 

“ No, you couldn’t,” said Tom, indignantly. “ Girl’s can’t 
do Euclid; can they, sir? ” 

“ They can pick up a little of everything, I dare say,” 


160 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


said Mr. Stelling. “ They've a great deal of superficial 
cleverness; but they couldn't go far into anything. They're 
quick and shallow.” 

Tom, delighted with this verdict, telegraphed his tri¬ 
umph by wagging his head at Maggie, behind Mr. Stelling's 
chair. As for Maggie, she had hardly ever been so morti¬ 
fied. She had been so proud to be called “ quick ” all her 
little life, and now it appeared that this quickness was the 
brand of inferiority. It would have been better to be slow, 
like Tom. 

“Ha, ha! Miss Maggie! ” said Tom, when they were 
alone; “you see it's not such a fine thing to be quick. 
You’ll never go far into anything, you know.” 

And Maggie was so oppressed by this dreadful destiny 
that she had no spirit for a retort. 

But when this small apparatus of shallow quickness was 
fetched away in the gig by Luke, and the study was once 
more quite lonely for Tom, he missed her grievously. He 
had really been brighter, and had got through his lessons 
better, since she had been there; and she had asked Mr. Stell¬ 
ing so many questions about the Roman Empire, and 
whether there really ever was a man who said, in Latin, “ I 
would not buy it for a farthing or a rotten nut,” or whether 
that had only been turned into Latin, that Tom had ac¬ 
tually come to a dim understanding of the fact that there 
had once been people upon the earth who were so fortunate 
as to know Latin without learning it through the medium 
of the Eton Grammar. This luminous idea was a great 
addition to his historical acquirements during this half- 
year, which were otherwise confined to an epitomized history 
of the Jews. 

But the dreary half-year did come to an end. How glad 
Tom was to see the last yellow leaves fluttering before the 
cold wind! The dark afternoons and the first December 
snow seemed to him far livelier than the August sunshine; 
and that he might make himself the surer about the flight 
of the days that were carrying him homeward, he stuck 
twenty-one sticks deep in a corner of the garden, when he 


SCHOOL-TIME 


161 


was three weeks from the holidays, and pulled one up every 
day with a great wrench, throwing it to a distance with a 
vigor of will which would have carried it to limbo, if it had 
been in the nature of sticks to travel so far. 

But it was worth purchasing, even at the heavy price of 
the Latin Grammar, the happiness of seeing the bright 
light in the parlor at home, as the gig passed noiselessly 
over the snow-covered bridge; the happiness of passing 
from the cold air to the warmth and the kisses and the 
smiles of that familiar hearth, where the pattern of the 
rug and the grate and the fire-irons were “ first ideas ” that 
it was no more possible to criticise than the solidity and 
extension of matter. There is no sense of ease like the ease 
we felt in those scenes where we were born, where objects 
became dear to us before we had known the labor of 
choice, and where the outer world seemed only an extension 
of our own personality; we accepted and loved it as we 
accepted our own sense of existence and our own limbs. 
Very commonplace, even ugly, that furniture of our early 
home might look if it were put up to auction; an improved 
taste in upholstery scorns it; and is not the striving after 
something better and better in our surroundings the grand 
characteristic that distinguishes man from the brute, or, to 
satisfy a scrupulous accuracy of definition, that distinguishes 
the British man from the foreign brute ? But heaven knows 
where that striving might lead us, if our affections had not 
a trick of twining round those old inferior things; if the 
loves and sanctities of our life had no deep immovable roots 
in memory. One’s delight in an elderberry bush overhang¬ 
ing the confused leafage of a hedgerow bank, as a more 
gladdening sight than the finest cistus or fuchsia spreading 
itself on the softest undulating turf, is an entirely unjustifi¬ 
able preference to a nursery-gardener, or to any of those 
severely regulated minds who are free from the weakness of 
any attachment that does not rest on a demonstrable superi¬ 
ority of qualities. And there is no better reason for pre¬ 
ferring this elderberry bush than that it stirs an early 
memory; that it is no novelty in my life, speaking to me 


162 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


merely through my present sensibilities to form and color, 
but the long companion of my existence, that wove itself into 
my joys when joys were vivid. 


CHAPTER II 

THE CHRISTMAS HOLIDAYS 

F INE old Christmas, with the snowy hair and ruddy face, 
had done his duty that year in the noblest fashion, and 
had set off his rich gifts of warmth and color with all the 
heightening contrast of frost and snow. 

Snow lay on the croft and river-bank in undulations 
softer than the limbs of infancy; it lay with the neatliest 
finished border on every sloping roof, making the dark- 
red gables stand out with a new depth of color; it weighed 
heavily on the laurels and fir-trees, till it fell from them with 
a shuddering sound; it clothed the rough turnip-field with 
whiteness, and made the sheep look like dark blotches; the 
gates were all blocked up with the sloping drifts, and here 
and there a disregarded four-footed beast stood as if petri¬ 
fied “ in unrecumbent sadness ” ; there was no gleam, no 
shadow, for the heavens, too, were one still, pale cloud; no 
sound or motion in anything but the dark river that flowed 
and moaned like an unresting sorrow. But old Christmas 
smiled as he laid this cruel-seeming spell on the outdoor 
world, for he meant to light up home with new brightness, 
to deepen all the richness of indoor color, and give a keener 
edge of delight to the warm fragrance of food; he meant to 
prepare a sweet imprisonment that would strengthen the 
primitive fellowship of kindred, and make the sunshine of 
familiar human faces as welcome as the hidden day-star. 
His kindness fell but hardly on the homeless, — fell but 
hardly on the homes where the hearth was not very warm, 
and where the food had little fragrance; where the human 
faces had no sunshine in them, but rather the leaden, blank- 


SCHOOL-TIME 


163 


eyed gaze of unexpectant want. But the fine old season 
meant well; and if he has not learned the secret how to bless 
men impartially, it is because his father Time, wijh ever- 
unrelenting purpose, still hides that secret in his own 
mighty, slow-beating heart. 

And yet this Christmas day, in spite of Tom’s fresh 
delight in home, was not, he thought, somehow or other, 
quite so happy as it had always been before. The red 
berries were just as abundant on the holly, and he and 
Maggie had dressed all the windows and mantelpieces and 
picture-frames on Christmas eve with as much taste as ever, 
wedding the thick-set scarlet clusters with branches of the 
black-berried ivy. There had been singing under the win¬ 
dows after midnight, — supernatural singing, Maggie al¬ 
ways felt, in spite of Tom’s contemptuous insistence that 
the singers were old Patch, the parish clerk, and the rest 
of the church choir; she trembled with awe when their 
carolling broke in upon her dreams, and the image of men 
in fustian clothes was always thrust away by the vision of 
angels resting on the parted cloud. The midnight chant 
had helped as usual to lift the morning above the level of 
common days; and then there were the smells of hot toast 
and ale from the kitchen, at the breakfast hour; the 
favorite anthem, the green boughs, and the short sermon 
gave the appropriate festal character to the church-going; 
and aunt and uncle Moss, with all their seven children, were 
looking like so many reflectors of the bright parlor-fire, 
when the church-goers came back, stamping the snow from 
their feet. The plum-pudding was of the same handsome 
roundness as ever, and came in with the symbolic blue 
flames around it, as if it had been heroically snatched from 
the nether fires, into which it had been thrown by dyspeptic 
Puritans; the dessert was as splendid as ever, with its 
golden oranges, brown nuts, and the crystalline light and 
dark of apple-jelly and damson cheese; in all these things 
Christmas was as it had always been since Tom could re¬ 
member; it was only distinguished, if by anything, by 
superior sliding and snowballs. 


164 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


Christmas was cheery, but not so Mr. Tulliver. He was 
irate and defiant;, and Tom, though he espoused his father’s 
quarrels and shared his father’s sense of injury, was not 
without some of the feeling that oppressed Maggie when Mr. 
Tulliver got louder and more angry in narration and as¬ 
sertion with the increased leisure of dessert. The attention 
that Tom might have concentrated on his nuts and wine 
was distracted by a sense that there were rascally enemies 
in the world, and that the business of grown-up life could 
hardly be conducted without a good deal of quarrelling. 
Now, Tom was not fond of quarrelling, unless it could soon 
be put an end to by a fair stand-up fight with an adversary 
whom he had every chance of thrashing; and his father’s 
irritable talk made him uncomfortable, though he never 
accounted to himself for the feeling, or conceived the notion 
that his father was faulty in this respect. 

The particular embodiment of the evil principle now ex¬ 
citing Mr. Tulliver’s determined resistance was Mr. Pivart, 
who, having lands higher up the Ripple, was taking meas¬ 
ures for their irrigation, which either were, or would be, 
or were bound to be (on the principle that water was 
water), an infringement on Mr. Tulliver’s legitimate share 
of water-power. Dix, who had a mill on the stream, was a 
feeble auxiliary of Old Harry compared with Pivart. Dix 
had been brought to his senses by arbitration, and Wakem’s 
advice had not carried him far. No; Dix, Mr. Tulliver 
considered, had been as good as nowhere in point of law; 
and in the intensity of his indignation against Pivart, his 
contempt for a baffled adversary like Dix began to wear 
the air of a friendly attachment. He had no male audience 
to-day except Mr. Moss, who knew nothing, as he said, of the 
“ natur’ o’ mills,” and could only assent to Mr. Tulliver’s 
arguments on the a priori ground of family relationship and 
monetary obligation; but Mr. Tulliver did not talk with 
the futile intention of convincing his audience, he talked to 
relieve himself; while good Mr. Moss made strong efforts 
to keep his eyes wide open, in spite of the sleepiness which 
an unusually good dinner produced in his hard-worked 


SCHOOL-TIME 


165 


frame. Mrs. Moss, more alive to the subject, and interested 
in everything that affected her brother, listened and put in 
a word as often as maternal preoccupations allowed. 

“ Why, Pivart’s a new name hereabout, brother, isn’t 
it? ” she said; “ he didn’t own the land in father’s time, nor 
yours either, before I was married.” 

“ New name? Yes, I should think it is a new name,” 
said Mr. Tulliver, with angry emphasis. “ Dorlcote Mill’s 
been in our family a hundred year and better, and nobody 
ever heard of a Pivart meddling with the river, till this 
fellow came and bought Bincome’s farm out of hand, before 
anybody else could so much as say ‘ snap.’ But I’ll Pivart 
him! ” added Mr. Tulliver, lifting his glass with a sense that 
he had defined his resolution in an unmistakable manner. 

“ You won’t be forced to go to law with him, I hope, 
brother ? ” said Mrs. Moss, with some anxiety. 

“I don’t know what I shall be forced to; but I know 
what I shall force him to, with his dikes and erigations, if 
there’s any law to be brought to bear o’ the right side. I 
know well enough who’s at the bottom of it; he’s got 
Wakem to back him and egg him on. I know Wakem tells 
him the law can’t touch him for it, but there’s folks can 
handle the law besides Wakem. It takes a big raskil to 
beat him; but there’s bigger to be found, as know more o’ 
th’ ins and outs o’ the law, else how came Wakem to lose 
Brumley’s suit for him? ” 

Mr. Tulliver was a strictly honest man, and proud of 
being honest, but he considered that in law the ends of 
justice could only be achieved by employing a stronger 
knave to frustrate a weaker. Law was a sort of cock-fight, 
in which it was the business of injured honesty to get a 
game bird with the best pluck and the strongest spurs. 

“ Gore’s no fool; you needn’t tell me that,” he observed 
presently, in a pugnacious tone, as if poor Gritty had been 
urging that lawyer’s capabilities; “ but, you see, he isn’t up 
to the law as Wakem is. And water’s a very particular 
thing; you can’t pick it up with a pitchfork. That’s why 
it’s been nuts to Old Harry and the lawyers. It’s plain 


166 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


enough what’s the right and the wrongs of water, if you 
look at it straight-forrard; for a river’s a river, and if you’ve 
got a mill, you must have water to turn it; and it’s no use 
telling me Pivart’s erigation and nonsense won’t stop my 
wheel; I know what belongs to water better than that. 
Talk to me o’ what th’ engineers say! I say it’s common 
sense, as Pivart’s dikes must do me an injury. But if that’s 
their engineering, I’ll put Tom to it by-and-by, and he shall 
see if he can’t find a bit more sense in th’ engineering busi¬ 
ness than what that comes to.” 

Tom, looking round with some anxiety at this announce¬ 
ment of his prospects, unthinkingly withdrew a small rattle 
he was amusing baby Moss with, whereupon she, being a 
baby that knew her own mind with remarkable clearness, 
instantaneously expressed her sentiments in a piercing yell, 
and was not to be appeased even by the restoration of the 
rattle, feeling apparently that the original wrong of having 
it taken from her remained in all its force. Mrs. Moss hur¬ 
ried away with her into another room, and expressed to 
Mrs. Tulliver, who accompanied her, the conviction that the 
dear child had good reasons for crying; implying that if it 
was supposed to be the rattle that the baby clamored for, 
she was a misunderstood baby. The thoroughly justifiable 
yell being quieted, Mrs. Moss looked at her sister-in-law and 
said, — 

“ I*m sorry to see brother so put out about this water 
work.” 

“ It’s your brother’s way, Mrs. Moss; I’d never anything 
o’ that sort before I was married,” said Mrs. Tulliver, with a 
half-implied reproach. She always spoke of her husband 
as “ your brother ” to Mrs. Moss in any case when his line 
of conduct was not matter of pure admiration. Amiable 
Mrs. Tulliver, who was never angry in her life, had yet her 
mild share of that spirit without which she could hardly have 
been at once a Dodson and a woman. Being always on the 
defensive toward her own sisters, it was natural that she 
should be keenly conscious of her superiority, even as the 
weakest Dodson, over a husband’s sister, who, besides being 


SCHOOL-TIME 


167 


poorly off, and inclined to “ hang on ” her brother, had the 
good-natured submissiveness of a large, easy-tempered, un¬ 
tidy, prolific woman, with affection enough in her not only 
for her own husband and abundant children, but for any 
number of collateral relations. 

“ I hope and pray he won’t go to law,” said Mrs. Moss, 
“ for there’s never any knowing where that’ll end. And the 
right doesn’t allays win. This Mr. Pivart’s a rich man, by 
what I can make out, and the rich mostly get things their 
own way.” 

“ As to that,” said Mrs. Tulliver, stroking her dress down, 
“ I’ve seen what riches are in my own family; for my sisters 
have got husbands as can afford to do pretty much what 
they like. But I think sometimes I shall be drove off my 
head with the talk about this law and erigation; and my 
sisters lay all the fault to me, for they don’t know what it 
is to marry a man like your brother; how should they? 
Sister Pullet has her own way from morning till night.” 

“ Well,” said Mrs. Moss, “ I don’t think I should like my 
husband if he hadn’t got any wits of his own, and I had to 
find headpiece for him. It’s a deal easier to do what pleases 
one’s husband, than to be puzzling what else one should do.” 

“ If people come to talk o’ doing what pleases their hus¬ 
bands,” said Mrs. Tulliver, with a faint imitation of her 
sister Glegg, “ I’m sure your brother might have waited a 
long while before he’d have found a wife that ’ud have let 
him have his say in everything, as I do. It’s nothing but 
law and erigation now, from when we first get up in the 
morning till we go to bed at night; and I never contradict 
him; I only say, 'Well, Mr. Tulliver, do as you like; but 
whativer you do, don’t go to law.’ ” 

Mrs. Tulliver, as we have seen, was not without influence 
over her husband. No woman is; she can always incline 
him to do either what she wishes, or the reverse; and on the 
composite impulses that were threatening to hurry Mr. Tul¬ 
liver into “ law,” Mrs. Tulliver’s monotonous pleading had 
doubtless its share of force; it might even be comparable 
to that proverbial feather which has the credit or discredit 


168 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


of breaking the camel's back; though, on a strictly impartial 
view, the blame ought rather to lie with the previous weight 
of feathers which had already placed the back in such immi¬ 
nent peril that an otherwise innocent feather could not settle 
on it without mischief. Not that Mrs. Tulliver’s feeble be¬ 
seeching could have had this feather's weight in virtue of 
her single personality; but whenever she departed from 
entire assent to her husband, he saw in her the representa¬ 
tive of the Dodson family; and it was a guiding principle 
with Mr. Tulliver to let the Dodsons know that they were 
not to domineer over him, or — more specifically — that a 
male Tulliver was far more than equal to four female Dod¬ 
sons, even though one of them was Mrs. Glegg. 

But not even a direct argument from that typical Dod¬ 
son female herself against his going to law could have 
heightened his disposition toward it so much as the mere 
thought of Wakem, continually freshened by the sight of the 
too able attorney on market-days. Wakem, to his certain 
knowledge, was (metaphorically speaking) at the bottom 
of Pivart’s irrigation; Wakem had tried to make Dix stand 
out, and go to law about the dam; it was unquestionably 
Wakem who had caused Mr. Tulliver to lose the suit about 
the right of road and the bridge that made a thorough¬ 
fare of his land for every vagabond who preferred an op¬ 
portunity of damaging private property to walking like an 
honest man along the highroad; all lawyers were more or less 
rascals, but Wakem’s rascality was of that peculiarly aggra¬ 
vated kind which placed itself in opposition to that form 
of right embodied in Mr. Tulliver’s interests and opinions. 
And as an extra touch of bitterness, the injured miller had 
recently, in borrowing the five hundred pounds, been 
obliged to carry a little business to Wakem’s office on his 
own account. A hook-nosed glib fellow! as cool as a cu¬ 
cumber, — always looking so sure of his game! And it was 
vexatious that Lawyer Gore was not more like him, but 
was a bald, round-featured man, with bland manners and 
fat hands; a game-cock that you would be rash to bet upon 
against Wakem. Gore was a sly fellow. His weakness did 


SCHOOL-TIME 


169 


not lie on the side of scrupulosity; but the largest amount 
of winking, however significant, is not equivalent to seeing 
through a stone wall; and confident as Mr. Tulliver was 
in his principle that water was water, and in the direct 
inference that Pivart had not a leg to stand on in this affair 
of irrigation, he had an uncomfortable suspicion that Wakem 
had more law to show against this (rationally) irrefragable 
inference than Gore could show for it. But then, if they 
went to law, there was a chance for Mr. Tulliver to employ 
Counsellor Wylde on his side, instead of having that ad¬ 
mirable bully against him; and the prospect of seeing a 
witness of Wakem’s made to perspire and become con¬ 
founded, as Mr. Tulliver’s witness had once been, was al¬ 
luring to the love of retributive justice. 

Much rumination had Mr. Tulliver on these puzzling sub¬ 
jects during his rides on the gray horse; much turning of 
the head from side to side, as the scales dipped alternately; 
but the probable result was still out of sight, only to be 
reached through much hot argument and iteration in do¬ 
mestic and social life. That initial stage of the dispute 
which consisted in the narration of the case and the en¬ 
forcement of Mr. Tulliver’s views concerning it throughout 
the entire circle of his connections would necessarily take 
time; and at the beginning of February, when Tom was go¬ 
ing to school again, there were scarcely any new items to be 
detected in his father's statement of the case against Pivart, 
or any more specific indication of the measures he was bent 
on taking against that rash contravener of the principle 
that water was water. Iteration, like friction, is likely to 
generate heat instead of progress, and Mr. Tulliver’s heat 
was certainly more and more palpable. If there had been 
no new evidence on any other point, there had been new 
evidence that Pivart was as “ thick,as mud ” with Wakem. 

“ Father," said Tom, one evening near the end of the 
holidays, “ uncle Glegg says Lawyer Wakem is going to send 
his son to Mr. Stelling. It isn’t true, what they said about 
his going to be sent to France. You won’t like me to go to 
school with Wakem’s son, shall you? ” 


170 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


“ It’s no matter for that, my boy,” said Mr. Tulliver; 
“ don’t you learn anything bad of him, that’s all. The lad’s 
a poor deformed creatur, and takes after his mother in the 
face; I think there isn’t much of his father in him. It’s 
a sign Wakem thinks high o’ Mr. Stelling, as he sends his 
son to him, and Wakem knows meal from bran.” 

Mr. Tulliver in his heart was rather proud of the fact 
that his son was to have the same advantages as Wakem’s; 
but Tom was not at all easy on the point. It would have 
been much clearer if the lawyer’s son had not been deformed, 
for then Tom would have had the prospect of pitching into 
him with all that freedom which is derived from a high 
moral sanction. 


CHAPTER III 

THE NEW SCHOOLFELLOW 

I T WAS a cold, wet January day on which Tom went back 
to school; a day quite in keeping with this severe phase 
of his destiny. If he had not carried in his pocket a parcel 
of sugar-candy and a small Dutch doll for little Laura, there 
would have been no ray of expected pleasure to enliven the 
general gloom. But he liked to think how Laura would put 
out her lips and her tiny hands for the bits of sugar-candy; 
and to give the greater keenness to these pleasures of im¬ 
agination, he took out the parcel, made a small hole in the 
paper, and bit off a crystal or two, which had so solacing 
an effect under the confined prospect and damp odors of the 
gig-umbrella, that he repeated the process more than once 
on his way. 

“ Well, Tulliver, we’re glad to see you again,” said Mr. 
Stelling, heartily. “ Take off your wrappings and come 
into the study till dinner. You’ll find a bright fire there, 
and a new companion.” 

Tom felt in an uncomfortable flutter as he took off his 
woollen comforter and other wrappings. He had seen Philip 


SCHOOL-TIME 


171 


Wakem at St. Ogg’s, but had always turned his eyes away 
from him as quickly as possible. He would have disliked 
having a deformed boy for his companion, even if Philip 
had not been the son of a bad man. And Tom did not see 
how a bad man’s son could be very good. His own father 
was a good man, and he would readily have fought any one 
who said the contrary. He was in a state of mingled em¬ 
barrassment and defiance as he followed Mr. Stelling to the 
study. 

“ Here is a new companion for you to shake hands with, 
Tulliver,” said that gentleman on entering the study,— 
“ Master Philip Wakem. I shall leave you to make ac¬ 
quaintance by yourselves. You already know something 
of each other, I imagine; for you are neighbors at home.” 

Tom looked confused and awkward, while Philip rose and 
glanced at him timidly. Tom did not like to go up and 
put out his hand, and he was not prepared to say, “ How 
do you do ? ” on so short a notice. 

Mr. Stelling wisely turned away, and closed the door be¬ 
hind him; boys’ shyness only wears off in the absence of 
their elders. 

Philip was at once too proud and too timid to walk to¬ 
ward Tom. He thought, or rather felt, that Tom had an 
aversion to looking at him; every one, almost, disliked look¬ 
ing at him; and his deformity was more conspicuous when 
he walked. So they remained without shaking hands or 
even speaking, while Tom went to the fire and warmed 
himself, every now and then casting furtive glances at 
Philip, who seemed to be drawing absently first one object 
and then another on a piece of paper he had before him. 
He had seated himself again, and as he drew, was think¬ 
ing what he could say to Tom, and trying to overcome 
his own repugnance to making the first advances. 

Tom began to look oftener and longer at Philip’s face, 
for he could see it without noticing the hump, and it was 
really not a disagreeable face, — very old-looking, Tom 
thought. He wondered how much older Philip was than 
himself. An anatomist — even a mere physiognomist — 


172 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


would have seen that the deformity of Philip’s spine was 
not a congenital hump, but the result of an accident in in¬ 
fancy; but you do not expect from Tom any acquaintance 
with such distinctions; to him, Philip was simply a hump¬ 
back. He had a vague notion that the deformity of 
Wakem’s son had some relation to the lawyer’s rascality, 
of which he had so often heard his father talk with hot em¬ 
phasis ; and he felt, too, a half-admitted fear of him as prob¬ 
ably a spiteful fellow, who, not being able to fight you, had 
cunning ways of doing you a mischief by the sly. There was 
a humpbacked tailor in the neighborhood of Mr. Jacobs’s 
academy, who was considered a very unamiable character, 
and was much hooted after by public-spirited boys solely 
on the ground of his unsatisfactory moral qualities; so that 
Tom was not without a basis of fact to go upon. Still, no 
face could be more unlike that ugly tailor’s than this 
melancholy boy’s face, — the brown hair round it waved 
and curled at the ends like a girl’s; Tom thought that truly 
pitiable. This Wakem was a pale, puny fellow, and it was 
quite clear he would not be able to play at anything worth 
speaking of; but he handled his pencil in an enviable 
manner, and was apparently making one thing after another 
without any trouble. What was he drawing? Tom was 
quite warm now, and wanted something new to be going 
forward. It was certainly more agreeable to have an ill- 
natured humpback as a companion than to stand looking 
out of the study window at the rain, and kicking his foot 
against the washboard in solitude; something would happen 
every day, — “a quarrel or something ” ; and Tom thought 
he should rather like to show Philip that he had better not 
try his spiteful tricks on him. He suddenly walked across 
the hearth and looked over Philip’s paper. 

“ Why, that’s a donkey with panniers, and a spaniel, and 
partridges in the corn! ” he exclaimed, his tongue being com¬ 
pletely loosed by surprise and admiration. “ Oh my but¬ 
tons! I wish I could draw like that. I’m to learn drawing 
this half; I wonder if I shall learn to make dogs and 
donkeys! ” 


SCHOOL-TIME 173 

“Oh, you can do them without learning,” said Philip; 
“ I never learned drawing.” 

“Never learned?” said Tom, in amazement. “Why, 
when I make dogs and horses, and those things, the heads 
and the legs won’t come right; though I can see how they 
ought to be very well. I can make houses, and all sorts 
of chimneys, — chimneys going all down the wall, — and 
windows in the roof, and all that. But I dare say I could 
do dogs and horses if I was to try more,” he added, re¬ 
flecting that Philip might falsely suppose that he was going 
to “ knock under,” if he were too frank about the im¬ 
perfection of his accomplishments. 

“Oh, yes,” said Philip, “it’s very easy. You’ve only 
to look well at things, and draw them over and over 
again. What you do wrong once, you can alter the next 
time.” 

“But haven’t you been taught am/thing?” said Tom, 
beginning to have a puzzled suspicion that Philip’s crooked 
back might be the source of remarkable faculties. “ I 
thought you’d been to school a long while.” 

“Yes,” said Philip, smiling; “I’ve been taught Latin 
and Greek and mathematics and writing and such things.” 

“ Oh, but I say, you don’t like Latin, though, do you ? ’ 7 
said Tom, lowering his voice confidentially. 

“ Pretty well; I don’t care much about it,” said Philip. 

“ Ah, but perhaps you haven’t got into the Propria quce 
maribus,” said Tom, nodding his head sideways, as much 
as to say, “ that was the test; it was easy talking till you 
came to that.” 

Philip felt some bitter complacency in the promising 
stupidity of this well-made, active-looking boy; but made 
polite by his own extreme sensitiveness, as well as by his 
desire to conciliate, he checked his inclination to laugh, and 
said quietly,— 

“I’ve done with the grammar; I don’t learn that any 
more.” 

“Then you won’t have the same lessons as I shall?” 
said Tom, with a sense of disappointment. 


174 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


“No; but I dare say I can help you. I shall be very 
glad to help you if I can.” 

Tom did not say “ Thank you,” for he was quite ab¬ 
sorbed in the thought that Wakem’s son did not seem so 
spiteful a fellow as might have been expected. 

“ I say,” he said presently, “ do you love your father ? ” 

“ Yes,” said Philip, coloring deeply; “ don’t you love 
yours? ” 

“ Oh, yes — I only wanted to know,” said Tom, rather 
ashamed of himself, now he saw Philip coloring and look¬ 
ing uncomfortable. He found much difficulty in adjusting 
his attitude of mind toward the son of Lawyer Wakem, and 
it had occurred to him that if Philip disliked his father, 
that fact might go some way toward clearing up his per¬ 
plexity. 

“ Shall you learn drawing now ? ” he said, by way of 
changing the subject. 

“No,” said Philip. “My father wishes me to give all 
my time to other things now.” 

“What! Latin and Euclid, and those things?” said 
Tom. 

“ Yes,” said Philip, who had left off using his pencil, and 
was resting his head on one hand, while Tom was leaning 
forward on both elbows, and looking with increasing ad¬ 
miration at the dog and the donkey. 

“And you don’t mind that?” said Tom, with strong 
curiosity. 

“No; I like to know what everybody else knows. I 
can study what I like by-and-by.” 

“ I can’t think why anybody should learn Latin,” said 
Tom. “ It’s no good.” 

“ It’s part of the education of a gentleman,” said Philip. 
“ All gentlemen learn the same things.” 

“What! do you think Sir John Crake, the master of 
the harriers, knows Latin? ” said Tom, who had often 
thought he should like to resemble Sir John Crake. 

“ He learned it when he was a boy, of course,” said 
Philip. “ But I dare say he’s forgotten it.” 


SCHOOL-TIME 


175 


“ Oh, well, I can do that, then/’ said Tom, not with any 
epigrammatic intention, but with serious satisfaction at the 
idea that, as far as Latin was concerned, there was no 
hindrance to his resembling Sir John Crake. “ Only you’re 
obliged to remember it while you’re at school, else you’ve 
got to learn ever so many lines of Speaker. Mr. Stelling’s 
very particular — did you know? He’ll have you up ten 
times if you say nam for jam, — he won’t let you go a letter 
wrong, / can tell you.” 

“ Oh, I don’t mind,” said Philip, unable to choke a 
laugh; “ I can remember things easily. And there are some 
lessons I’m very fond of. I’m very fond of Greek history, 
and everything about the Greeks. I should like to have been 
a Greek and fought the Persians, and then have come home 
and have written tragedies, or else have been listened to 
by everybody for my wisdom, like Socrates, and have died 
a grand death.” (Philip, you perceive, was not without a 
wish to impress the well-made barbarian with a sense of 
his mental superiority.) 

“ Why, were the Greeks great fighters?” said Tom, 
who saw a vista in this direction. “ Is there anything 
like David and Goliath and Samson in the Greek his¬ 
tory? Those are the only bits I like in the history of the 
Jews.” 

“ Oh, there are very fine stories of that sort about the 
Greeks, — about the heroes of early times who killed the 
wild beasts, as Samson did. And in the Odyssey — that’s 
a beautiful poem — there’s a more wonderful giant than 
Goliath, — Polypheme, who had only one eye in the middle 
of his forehead; and Ulysses, a little fellow, but very wise 
and cunning, got a red-hot pine-tree and stuck it into this 
one eye, and made him roar like a thousand bulls.” 

“ Oh, what fun! ” said Tom, jumping away from the 
table, and stamping first with one leg and then the other. 
“ I say, can you tell me all about those stories ? Because 
I sha’n’t learn Greek, you know. Shall I? ” he added, paus¬ 
ing in his stamping with a sudden alarm, lest the con¬ 
trary might be possible. “ Does every gentleman learn 


176 MILL ON THE FLOSS 

Greek? Will Mr. Stelling make me begin with it, do you 
think? ” 

“ No, I should think not, very likely not,” said Philip. 
“ But you may read those stories without knowing Greek. 
I’ve got them in English.” 

“ Oh, but I don’t like reading; I’d sooner have you tell 
them me. But only the fighting ones, you know. My sister 
Maggie is always wanting to tell me stories, but they’re 
stupid things. Girls’ stories always are. Can you tell a 
good many fighting stories ? ” 

“ Oh yes,” said Philip; “ lots of them, besides the Greek 
stories. I can tell you about Richard Coeur-de-Lion and 
Saladin, and about William Wallace and Robert Bruce and 
James Douglas, — I know no end.” 

“You’re older than I am, aren’t you? ” said Tom. 

“ Why, how old are you? I’m fifteen.” 

“ I’m only going in fourteen,” said Tom. “ But I thrashed 
all the fellows at Jacob’s — that’s where I was before I 
came here. And I beat ’em all at bandy and climbing. And 
I wish Mr. Stelling would let us go fishing. 1 could show you 
how to fish. You could fish, couldn’t you? It’s only stand¬ 
ing, and sitting still, you know.” 

Tom, in his turn, wished to make the balance dip in his 
favor. This hunchback must not suppose that his ac¬ 
quaintance with fighting stories put him on a par with an 
actual fighting hero, like Tom Tulliver. Philip winced under 
this allusion to his unfitness for active sports, and he 
answered almost peevishly, — 

“ I can’t bear fishing. I think people look like fools 
sitting watching a line hour after hour, or else throwing 
and throwing, and catching nothing.” 

“Ah, but you wouldn’t say they looked like fools when 
they landed a big pike, I can tell you,” said Tom, who 
had never caught anything that was “ big ” in his life, 
but whose imagination was on the stretch with indignant 
zeal for the honor of sport. Wakem’s son, it was plain, 
had his disagreeable points, and must be kept in due check. 
Happily for the harmony of this first interview, they were 


SCHOOL-TIME 


177 


now called to dinner, and Philip was not allowed to de¬ 
velop farther his unsound views on the subject of fishing. 
But Tom said to himself, that was just what he should 
have expected from a hunchback. 


CHAPTER IV 

“ THE YOUNG IDEA ” 

T HE alternations of feeling in that first dialogue between 
Tom and Philip continued to mark their intercourse 
even after many weeks of schoolboy intimacy. Tom never 
quite lost the feeling that Philip, being the son of a “ rascal,” 
was his natural enemy; never thoroughly overcame his re¬ 
pulsion to Philip’s deformity. He was a boy who adhered 
tenaciously to impressions once received; as with all minds 
in which mere perception predominates over thought and 
emotion, the external remained to him rigidly what it was 
in the first instance. But then it was impossible not to 
like Philip’s company when he was in a good humor; he 
could help one so well in one’s Latin exercises, which Tom 
regarded as a kind of puzzle that could only be found out 
by a lucky chance; and he could tell such wonderful fight¬ 
ing stories about Hal of the Wynd, for example, and other 
heroes who were especial favorites with Tom, because they 
laid about them with heavy strokes. He had small opinion 
of Saladin, whose scimitar could cut a cushion in two in an 
instant; who wanted to cut cushions? That was a stupid 
story, and he didn’t care-to hear it again. But when Robert 
Bruce, on the black pony, rose in his stirrups, and lifting 
his good battle-axe, cracked at once the helmet and the skull 
of the too hasty knight at Bannockburn, then Tom felt all 
the exaltation of sympathy, and if he had had a cocoanut 
at hand, he would have cracked it at once with the poker. 
Philip in his happier moods indulged Tom to the top of 
his bent, heightening the crash and bang and fury of every 


178 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


fight with all the artillery of epithets and similes at his 
command. But he was not always in a good humor or 
happy mood. The slight spurt of peevish susceptibility 
which had escaped him in their first interview was a 
symptom of a perpetually recurring mental ailment, half 
of it nervous irritability, half of it the heart-bitterness pro¬ 
duced by the sense of his deformity. In these fits of sus¬ 
ceptibility every glance seemed to him to be charged either 
with offensive pity or with ill-repressed disgust; at the very 
least it was an indifferent glance, and Philip felt indifference 
as a child of the south feels the chill of a northern spring. 
Poor Tom’s blundering patronage when they were out of 
doors together would sometimes make him turn upon the 
well-meaning lad quite savagely; and his eyes, usually sad 
and quiet, would flash with anything but playful lightning. 
No wonder Tom retained his suspicions of the humpback. 

But Philip’s self-taught skill in drawing was another link 
between them; for Tom found, to his disgust, that his new 
drawing-master gave him no dogs and donkeys to draw, 
but brooks and rustic bridges and ruins, all with a general 
softness of black-lead surface, indicating that nature, if 
anything, was rather satiny; and as Tom’s feeling for the 
picturesque in landscape was at present quite latent, it is 
not surprising that Mr. Goodrich’s productions seemed to 
him an uninteresting form of art. Mr. Tulliver, having a 
vague intention that Tom should be put to some business 
which included the drawing out of plans and maps, had 
complained to Mr. Riley, when he saw him at Mudport, 
that Tom seemed to be learning nothing of that sort; where¬ 
upon that obliging adviser had suggested that Tom should 
have drawing-lessons. Mr. Tulliver must not mind paying 
extra for drawing; let Tom be made a good draughtsman, 
and he would be able to turn his pencil to any purpose. 
So it was ordered that Tom should have drawing-lessons; 
and whom should Mr. Stelling have selected as a master 
if not Mr. Goodrich, who was considered quite at the head 
of his profession within a circuit of twelve miles round 
King’s Lorton? By which means Tom learned to make 


SCHOOL-TIME 


179 


an extremely fine point to his pencil, and to represent land¬ 
scape with a “ broad generality,” which, doubtless from a 
narrow tendency in his mind to details, he thought ex¬ 
tremely dull. 

All this, you remember, happened in those dark ages 
when there were no schools of design; before schoolmasters 
were invariably men of scrupulous integrity, and before the 
clergy were all men of enlarged minds and varied culture. 
In those less favored days, it is no fable that there were 
other clergymen besides Mr. Stelling who had narrow in¬ 
tellects and large wants, and whose income, by a logical 
confusion to which Fortune, being a female as well as blind¬ 
fold, is peculiarly liable, was proportioned not to their wants 
but to their intellect, with which income has clearly no in¬ 
herent relation. The problem these gentlemen had to solve 
was to readjust the proportion between their wants and 
their income; and since wants are not easily starved to 
death, the simpler method appeared to be to raise their 
income. There was but one way of doing this; any of those 
low callings in which men are obliged to do good work at a 
low price were forbidden to clergymen; was it their fault if 
their only resource was to turn out very poor work at a 
high price? Besides, how should Mr. Stelling be expected 
to know that education was a delicate and difficult business, 
any more than an animal endowed with a power of boring a 
hole through a rock should be expected to have wide views of 
excavation? Mr. Stelling’s faculties had been early trained 
to boring in a straight line, and he had no faculty to spare. 
But among Tom’s contemporaries, whose fathers cast their 
sons on clerical instruction to find them ignorant after many 
days, there were many far less lucky than Tom Tulliver. 
Education was almost entirely a matter of luck — usually 
of ill-luck — in those distant days. The state of mind in 
which you take a billiard-cue or a dice-box in your hand is 
one of sober certainty compared with that of old-fashioned 
fathers, like Mr. Tulliver, when they selected a school or a 
tutor for their sons. Excellent men, who had been forced 
all their lives to spell on an impromptu-phonetic system, and 


180 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


haying carried on a successful business in spite of this dis¬ 
advantage, had acquired money enough to give their sons a 
better start in life than they had had themselves, must nec¬ 
essarily take their chance as to the conscience and the com¬ 
petence of the schoolmaster whose circular fell in their way, 
and appeared to promise so much more than they would 
ever have thought of asking for. 

It was happy for them if some ambitious draper of their 
acquaintance had not brought up his son to the Church, 
and if that young gentleman, at the age of four-and-twenty, 
had not closed his college dissipations by an imprudent 
marriage; otherwise, these innocent fathers, desirous of doing 
the best for their offspring, could only escape the draper’s 
son by happening to be on the foundation of a grammar- 
school as yet unvisited by commissioners, where two or three 
boys could have, all to themselves, the advantages of a large 
and lofty building, together with a head-master, toothless, 
dim-eyed and deaf, whose erudite indistinctness and inat¬ 
tention were engrossed by them at the rate of three hundred 
pounds a-head, — a ripe scholar, doubtless, when first ap¬ 
pointed; but all ripeness beneath the sun has a further stage 
less esteemed in the market. 

Tom Tulliver, then, compared with many other British 
youths of his time who have since had to scramble through 
life with some fragments of more or less relevant knowledge, 
and a great deal of strictly relevant ignorance, was not so 
very unlucky. Mr. Stelling was a broad-chested, healthy 
man, with the bearing of a gentleman, a conviction that a 
growing boy required a sufficiency of beef, and a certain 
hearty kindness in him that made him like to see Tom look¬ 
ing well and enjoying his dinner; not a man of refined con¬ 
science, or with any deep sense of the infinite issues belong¬ 
ing to every-day duties, not quite competent to his high 
offices; but incompetent gentlemen must live, and without 
private fortune it is difficult to see how they could all live 
genteelly if they had nothing to do with education or gov¬ 
ernment. Besides, it was the fault of Tom’s mental con¬ 
stitution that his faculties could not be nourished on the sort 


SCHOOL-TIME 


181 


of knowledge Mr. Stelling had to communicate. A boy born 
with a deficient power of apprehending signs and abstrac¬ 
tions must suffer the penalty of his congenital deficiency, 
just as if he had been born with one leg shorter than the 
other. A method of education sanctioned by the long prac¬ 
tice of our venerable ancestors was not to give way before 
the exceptional dulness of a boy who was merely living at 
the time then present. And Mr. Stelling was convinced that 
a boy so stupid at signs and abstractions must be stupid at 
everything else, even if that reverend gentleman could have 
taught him everything else. It was the practice of our 
venerable ancestors to apply that ingenious instrument the 
thumb-screw, and to tighten and tighten it in order to elicit 
non-existent facts; they had a fixed opinion to begin with, 
that the facts were existent, and what had they to do but to 
tighten the thumb-screw? In like manner, Mr. Stelling had 
a fixed opinion that all boys with any capacity could learn 
what it was the only regular thing to teach; if they were 
slow, the thumb-screw must be tightened, — the exercises 
must be insisted on with increased severity, and a page of 
Virgil be awarded as a penalty, to encourage and stimulate 
a too languid inclination to Latin verse. 

The thumb-screw was a little relaxed, however, during 
this second half-year. Philip was so advanced in his studies, 
and so apt, that Mr. Stelling could obtain credit by his 
facility, which required little help, much more easily than 
by the troublesome process of overcoming Tom’s dulness. 
Gentlemen with broad chests and ambitious intentions do 
sometimes disappoint their friends by failing to carry the 
world before them. Perhaps it is that high achievements 
demand some other unusual qualification besides an unusual 
desire for high prizes; perhaps it is that these stalwart 
gentlemen are rather indolent, their divince. particulum aurce 
being obstructed from soaring by a too hearty appetite. 
Some reason or other there was why Mr. Stelling deferred 
the execution of many spirited projects, — why he did not 
begin the editing of his Greek play, or any other work of 
scholarship, in his leisure hours, but, after turning the key 


182 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


of his private study with much resolution, sat down to one 
of Theodore Hook's novels. Tom was gradually allowed 
to shuffle through his lessons with less rigor, and having 
Philip to help him, he was able to make some show of hav¬ 
ing applied his mind in a confused and blundering way, 
without being cross-examined into a betrayal that his mind 
had been entirely neutral in the matter. He thought school 
much more bearable under this modification of circum¬ 
stances; and he went on contentedly enough, picking up a 
promiscuous education chiefly from things that were not 
intended as education at all. What was understood to be 
his education was simply the practice of reading, writing, 
and spelling, carried on by an elaborate appliance of unin¬ 
telligible ideas, and by much failure in the effort to learn 
by rote. 

Nevertheless, there was a visible improvement in Tom 
under this training; perhaps because he was not a boy in 
the abstract, existing solely to illustrate the evils of a mis¬ 
taken education, but a boy made of flesh and blood, with 
dispositions not entirely at the mercy of circumstances. 

^ There was a great improvement in his bearing, for ex¬ 
ample; and some credit on this score was due to Mr. Poulter, 
the village schoolmaster, who, being an old Peninsular sol¬ 
dier, was employed to drill Tom, — a source of high mutual 
pleasure. Mr. Poulter, who was understood by the company 
at the Black Swan to have once struck terror into the hearts 
of the French, was no longer personally formidable. He had 
rather a shrunken appearance, and was tremulous in the 
mornings, not from age, but from the extreme perversity of 
the King's Lorton boys, which nothing but gin could enable 
him to sustain with any firmness. Still, he carried himself 
with martial erectness, had his clothes scrupulously brushed, 
and his trousers tightly strapped; and on the Wednesday 
and Saturday afternoons, when he came to Tom, he was al¬ 
ways inspired with gin and old memories, which gave him 
an exceptionally spirited air, as of a superannuated charger 
who hears the drum. 

The drilling-lessons were always protracted by episodes of 


SCHOOL-TIME 


183 


warlike narrative, much more interesting to Tom than 
Philip’s stories out of the Iliad; for there were no cannon in 
the Iliad, and besides, Tom had felt some disgust on learning 
that Hector and Achilles might possibly never have existed. 
But the Duke of Wellington was really alive, and Bony had 
not been long dead; therefore Mr. Poulter’s reminiscences of 
the Peninsular War were removed from all suspicion of being 
mythical. Mr. Poulter, it appeared, had been a conspicuous 
figure at Talavera, and had contributed not a little to the 
peculiar terror with which his regiment of infantry was re¬ 
garded by the enemy. On afternoons when his memory was 
more stimulated than usual, he remembered that the Duke 
of Wellington had (in strict privacy, lest jealousies should be 
awakened) expressed his esteem for that fine fellow Poulter. 
The very surgeon who attended him in the hospital after he 
had received his gunshot-wound had been profoundly im¬ 
pressed with the superiority of Mr. Poulter’s flesh — no other 
flesh would have healed in anything like the same time. On 
less personal matters connected with the important warfare 
in which he had been engaged, Mr. Poulter was more reticent, 
only taking care not to give the weight of his authority 
to any loose notions concerning military history. Any one 
who pretended to a knowledge of what occurred at the siege 
of Badajos was especially an object of silent pity to Mr. 
Poulter; he wished that prating person had been run down, 
and had the breath trampled out of him at the first go¬ 
off, as he himself had, — he might talk about the siege of 
Badajos then! Tom did not escape irritating his drilling- 
master occasionally, by his curiosity concerning other mili¬ 
tary matters than Mr. Poulter’s personal experience. 

“ And General Wolfe, Mr. Poulter, — wasn’t he a wonder¬ 
ful fighter ? ” said Tom, who held the notion that all the 
martial heroes commemorated on the public-house signs 
were engaged in the war with Bony. 

“ Not at all! ” said Mr. Poulter, contemptuously. “ Noth¬ 
ing o’ the sort! Heads up! ” he added, in a tone of stern 
command, which delighted Tom, and made him feel as if 
he were a regiment in his own person. 


184 


MILL ON THE FLOSS * 


“ No, no! ” Mr. Poulter would continue, on coming to a 
pause in his discipline; “ they’d better not talk to me about 
General Wolfe. He did nothing but die of his wound; 
that’s a poor haction, I consider. Any other man ’ud have 
died o’ the wounds I’ve had. One of my sword-cuts ’ud ha’ 
killed a fellow like General Wolfe.” 

“ Mr. Poulter,” Tom would say, at any allusion to the 
sword, “ I wish you’d bring your sword and do the sword- 
exercise! ” 

For a long while Mr. Poulter only shook his head in a 
significant manner at this request, and smiled patronizingly, 
as Jupiter may have done when Semele urged her too am¬ 
bitious request. But one afternoon, when a sudden shower 
of heavy rain had detained Mr. Poulter twenty minutes 
longer than usual at the Black Swan, the sword was brought, 
— just for Tom to look at. 

“ And this is the real sword you fought with in all the 
battles, Mr. Poulter? ” said Tom, handling the hilt. “ Has 
it ever cut a Frenchman’s head off? ” 

“ Head off? Ah! and would, if he’d had three heads.” 

“ But you had a gun and bayonet besides ? ” said Tom. 
“ I should like the gun and bayonet best, because you could 
shoot ’em first and spear ’em after. Bang! Ps-s-s-s! ” 
Tom gave the requisite pantomime to indicate the double 
enjoyment of pulling the trigger and thrusting the spear. 

“ Ah, but the sword’s the thing- when you come to close 
fighting,” said Mr. Poulter, involuntarily falling in with 
Tom’s enthusiasm, and drawing the sword so suddenly that 
Tom leaped back with much agility. 

“ Oh, but, Mr. Poulter, if you’re going to do the exercise,” 
said Tom, a little conscious that he had not stood his ground 
as became an Englishman, “ let me go and call Philip. He’ll 
like to see you, you know.” 

“What! the humpbacked lad?” said Mr. Poulter, con¬ 
temptuously; “ what’s the use of his looking on? ” 

“ Oh, but he knows a great deal about fighting,” said 
Tom, “ and how they used to fight with bows and arrows, 
and battle-axes.” 


SCHOOL-TIME 


185 


“ Let him come, then. I’ll show him something different 
from his bows and arrows,” said Mr. Poulter, coughing and 
drawing himself up, while he gave a little preliminary play 
to his wrist. 

Tom ran in to Philip, who was enjoying his afternoon’s 
holiday at the piano, in the drawing-room, picking out tunes 
for himself and singing them. He was supremely happy, 
perched like an amorphous bundle on the high stool, with 
his head thrown back, his eyes fixed on the opposite 
cornice, and his lips wide open, sending forth, with all his 
might, impromptu syllables to a tune of Arne’s which had 
hit his fancy. 

“ Come, Philip,” said Tom, bursting in; “ don’t stay roar¬ 
ing ‘ la la ’ there; come and see old Poulter do his sword- 
exercise in the carriage-house! ” 

The jar of this interruption, the discord of Tom’s tones 
coming across the notes to which Philip was vibrating in 
soul and body, would have been enough to unhinge his 
temper, even if there had been no question of Poulter the 
drilling-master; and Tom, in the hurry of seizing some¬ 
thing to say to prevent Mr. Poulter from thinking he was 
afraid of the sword when he sprang away from it, had 
alighted on this proposition to fetch Philip, though he knew 
well enough that Philip hated to hear him mention his 
drilling-lessons. Tom would never have done so incon¬ 
siderate a thing except under the severe stress of his per¬ 
sonal pride. 

Philip shuddered visibly as he paused from his music. 
Then turning red, he said, with violent passion, — 

“ Get away, you lumbering idiot! Don’t come bellowing 
at me; you’re not fit to speak to anything but a cart¬ 
horse! ” 

It was not the first time Philip had been made angry by 
him, but Tom had never before been assailed with verbal 
missiles that he understood so well. 

“I’m fit to speak to something better than you, you 
poor-spirited imp! ” said Tom, lighting up immediately at 
Philip’s fire. “ You know I won’t hit you, because you’re 


186 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


no better than a girl. But I’m an honest man’s son, and 
your father’s a rogue; everybody says so! ” 

Tom flung out of the room, and slammed the door after 
him, made strangely heedless by his anger; for to slam 
doors within the hearing of Mrs. Stelling, who was prob¬ 
ably not far off, was an offence only to be wiped out by 
twenty lines of Virgil. In fact, that lady did presently de¬ 
scend from her room, in double wonder at the noise and 
the subsequent cessation of Philip’s music. She found him 
sitting in a heap on the hassock, and crying bitterly. 

“ What’s the matter, Wakem? what was that noise about? 
Who slammed the door ? ” 

Philip looked up, and hastily dried his eyes. “ It was 
Tulliver who came in — to ask me to go out with him.” 

“ And what are you in trouble about?” said Mrs. Stel¬ 
ling. 

Philip was not her favorite of the two pupils; he was 
less obliging than Tom, who was made useful in many ways. 
Still, his father paid more than Mr. Tulliver did, and she 
meant him to feel that she behaved exceedingly well to him. 
Philip, however, met her advances toward a good under¬ 
standing very much as a caressed mollusk meets an invita¬ 
tion to show himself out of his shell. Mrs. Stelling was 
not a loving, tender-hearted woman; she was a woman 
whose skirt sat well, who adjusted her waist and patted 
her curls with a preoccupied air when she inquired after 
your welfare. These things, doubtless, represent a great 
social power, but it is not the power of love; and no other 
power could win Philip from his personal reserve. 

He said, in answer to her question, “ My toothache came 
on, and made me hysterical again.” 

This had been the fact once, and Philip was glad of the 
recollection; it was like an inspiration to enable him to 
excuse his crying. He had to accept eau-de-Cologne and to 
refuse creosote in consequence; but that was easy. 

Meanwhile Tom, who had for the first time sent a poisoned 
arrow into Philip’s heart, had returned to the carriage- 
house, where he found Mr. Poulter, with a fixed and earnest 


SCHOOL-TIME 


187 


eye, wasting the perfection of his sword-exercise on prob¬ 
ably observant but inappreciative rats. But Mr. Poulter 
was a host in himself; that is to say, he admired himself 
more than a whole army of spectators could have admired 
him. He took no notice of Tom’s return, being too entirely 
absorbed in the cut and thrust, — the solemn one, two, 
three, four; and Tom, not without a slight feeling of alarm 
at Mr. Poulter’s fixed eye and hungry-looking sword, which 
seemed impatient for something else to cut besides the air, 
admired the performance from as great a distance as pos¬ 
sible. It was not until Mr. Poulter paused and wiped the 
perspiration from his forehead, that Tom felt the full 
charm of the sword-exercise, and wished it to be repeated. 

“ Mr. Poulter,” said Tom, when the sword was being 
finally sheathed, “ I wish you’d lend me your sword a little 
while to keep.” 

“ No, no, young gentleman,” said Mr. Poulter, shaking his 
head decidedly; “you might do yourself some mischief 
with it.” 

“ No, I’m sure I wouldn’t; I’m sure I’d take care and not 
hurt myself. I shouldn’t take it out of the sheath much, 
but I could ground arms with it, and all that.” 

“ No, no, it won’t do, I tell you; it won’t do,” said Mr. 
Poulter, preparing to depart. “ What ’ud Mr. Stelling say 
to me? ” 

“Oh, I say, do, Mr. Poulter! I’d give you my five- 
shilling piece if you’d let me keep the sword a week. Look 
here! ” said Tom, reaching out the attractively large round 
of silver. The young dog calculated the effect as well as if 
he had been a philosopher. 

“ Well,” said Mr. Poulter, with still deeper gravity, “ you 
must keep it out of sight, you know.” 

“ Oh yes, I’ll keep it under the bed,” said Tom, eagerly, 
“ or else at the bottom of my large box.” 

“ And let me see, now, whether you can draw it out of 
the sheath without hurting yourself.” 

That process having been gone through more than once, 
Mr. Poulter felt that he had acted with scrupulous con- 


188 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


scientiousness, and said, “ Well, now, Master Tulliver, if I 
take the crown-piece, it is to make sure as you’ll do no 
mischief with the sword/’ 

“ Oh no, indeed, Mr. Poulter,” said Tom, delightedly hand¬ 
ing him the crown-piece, and grasping the sword, which, he 
thought, might have been lighter with advantage. 

“But if Mr. Stelling catches you carrying it in?” said 
Mr. Poulter, pocketing the crown-piece provisionally while 
he raised this new doubt. 

“ Oh, he always keeps in his upstairs study on Saturday 
afternoons,” said Tom, who disliked anything sneaking, but 
was not disinclined to a little stratagem in a worthy cause. 
So he carried off the sword in triumph mixed with dread — 
dread that he might encounter Mr. or Mrs. Stelling — to 
his bedroom, where, after some consideration, he hid it in 
the closet behind some hanging clothes. That night he fell 
asleep in the thought that he would astonish Maggie with 
it when she came, — tie it round his waist with his red 
comforter, and make her believe that the sword was his 
own, and that he was going to be a soldier. There was no¬ 
body but Maggie who would be silly enough to believe 
him, or whom he dared allow to know he had a sword; and 
Maggie was really coming next week to see Tom, before 
she went to a boarding-school with Lucy. 

If you think a lad of thirteen would not have been so 
childish, you must be an exceptionally wise man, who, al¬ 
though you are devoted to a civil calling, requiring you to 
look bland rather than formidable, yet never, since you had 
a beard, threw yourself into a martial attitude, and frowned 
before the looking-glass. It is doubtful whether our sol- 
“"“^ctiers would be maintained if they were not pacific people 
at home who like to fancy themselves soldiers. War, like 
other dramatic spectacles, might possibly cease for want of 
a “ public.” 




CHAPTER V 
Maggie’s second visit 

T HIS last breach between the two lads was not readily 
mended, and for some time they spoke to each other no 
more than was necessary. Their natural antipathy of tem¬ 
perament made resentment an easy passage to hatred, and 
in Philip the transition seemed to have begun; there was no 
malignity in his disposition, but there was a susceptibility 
that made him peculiarly liable to a strong sense of repul¬ 
sion. The ox — we may venture to assert it on the authority 
of a great classic — is not given to use his teeth as an in¬ 
strument of attack, and Tom was an excellent bovine lad, 
who ran at questionable objects in a truly ingenious bovine 
manner; but he had blundered on Philip’s tenderest point, 
and had caused him as much acute pain as if he had studied 
the means with the nicest precision and the most envenomed 
spite. Tom saw no reason why they should not make up 
this quarrel as they had done many others, by behaving 
as if nothing had happened; for though he had never before 
said to Philip that his father was a rogue, this idea had so 
habitually made part of his feeling as to the relation be¬ 
tween himself and his dubious schoolfellow, whom he could 
neither like nor dislike, that the mere utterance did not 

189 





190 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


make such an epoch to him as it did to Philip. And he 
had a right to say so when Philip hectored over him, and 
called him names. But perceiving that his first advances 
toward amity were not met, he relapsed into his least 
favorable disposition toward Philip, and resolved never to 
appeal to him either about drawing or exercises again. They 
were only so far civil to each other as was necessary to 
prevent their state of feud from being observed by Mr. 
Stelling, who would have “ put down ” such nonsense with 
great vigor. 

When Maggie came, however, she could not help looking 
with growing interest at the new schoolfellow, although he 
was the son of that wicked Lawyer Wakem, who made her 
father so angry. She had arrived in the middle of school- 
hours, and had sat by while Philip went through his lessons 
with Mr. Stelling. Tom, some weeks ago, had sent her 
word that Philip knew no end of stories, — not stupid 
stories like hers; and she was convinced now from her own 
observation that he must be very clever; she hoped he 
would think her rather clever too, when she came to talk 
to him. Maggie, moreover, had rather a tenderness for 
deformed things; she preferred the wry-necked lambs, be¬ 
cause it seemed to her that the lambs which were quite 
strong and well made wouldn’t mind so much about being 
petted; and she was especially fond of petting objects that 
would think it very delightful to be petted by her. She 
loved Tom very dearly, but she often wished that he 
cared more about her loving him. 

“ I think Philip Wakem seems a nice boy, Tom,” she 
said, when they went out of the study together into the 
garden, to pass the interval before dinner. “ He couldn’t 
choose his father, you know; and I’ve read of very bad men 
who had good sons, as well as good parents who had bad 
children. And if Philip is good, I think we ought to be the 
more sorry for him because his father is not a good man. 
You like him, don’t you? ” 

“ Oh, he’s a queer fellow,” said Tom, curtly, “ and he’s 
as sulky as can be with me, because I told him his father was 


SCHOOL-TIME 


191 


a rogue. And I’d a right to tell him so, for it was true; and 
he began it, with calling me names. But you stop here by 
yourself a bit, Magsie, will you? I’ve got something I 
want to do upstairs.” 

“ Can’t I go too ? ” said Maggie, who in this first day 
of meeting again loved Tom’s shadow. 

“ No, it’s something I’ll tell you about by-and-by, not 
yet,” said Tom, skipping away. 

In the afternoon the boys were at their books in the 
study, preparing the morrow’s lessons, that they might have 
a holiday in the evening in honor of Maggie’s arrival. Tom 
was hanging over his Latin grammar, moving his lips in- 
audibly like a strict but impatient Catholic repeating his 
tale of paternosters; and Philip, at the other end of the 
room, was busy with two volumes, with a look of contented 
diligence that excited Maggie’s curiosity; he did not look 
at all as if he were learning a lesson. She sat on a low stool 
at nearly a right angle with the two boys, watching first one 
and then the other; and Philip, looking off his book once 
toward the fire-place caught the pair of questioning dark 
eyes fixed upon him. He thought this sister of Tulliver’s 
seemed a nice little thing, quite unlike her brother; he 
wished he had a little sister. What was it, he wondered, 
that made Maggie’s dark eyes remind him of the stories 
about princesses being turned into animals ? I think it was 
that her eyes were full of unsatisfied intelligence and un¬ 
satisfied, beseeching affection. 

“I say, Magsie,” said Tom at last, shutting his books 
and putting them away with the energy and decision of a 
perfect master in the art of leaving off, “ I’ve done my 
lessons now. Come upstairs with me.” 

“ What is it? ” said Maggie, when they were outside the 
door, a slight suspicion crossing her mind as she remembered 
Tom’s preliminary visit upstairs. “ It isn’t a trick you’re 
going to play me, now? ” 

“ No, no, Maggie,” said Tom, in his most coaxing tone; 
“ it’s something you’ll like ever so.” 

He put his arm round her neck, and she put hers round 


192 MILL ON THE FLOSS 

his waist, and twined together in this way, they went up¬ 
stairs. 

“ I say, Magsie, you must not tell anybody, you know,” 
said Tom, “ else I shall get fifty lines.” 

“ Is it alive ? ” said Maggie, whose imagination had settled 
for the moment on the idea that Tom kept a ferret clan¬ 
destinely. 

“ Oh, I sha’n’t tell you,” said he. “ Now you go into 
that corner and hide your face, while I reach it out,” he 
added, as he locked the bedroom door behind them. “ I’ll 
tell you when to turn round. You mustn’t squeal out, 
you know.” 

“ Oh, but if you frighten me, I shall,” said Maggie, be¬ 
ginning to look rather serious. 

“ You won’t be frightened, you silly thing,” said Tom. 
“ Go and hide your face, and mind you don’t peep.” 

“ Of course I sha’n’t peep,” said Maggie, disdainfully; 
and she buried her face in the pillow like a person of strict 
honor. 

But Tom looked round warily as he walked to the closet; 
then he stepped into the narrow space, and almost closed 
the door. Maggie kept her face buried without the aid 
of principle, for in that dream-suggestive attitude she had 
soon forgotten where she was, and her thoughts were busy 
with the poor deformed boy, who was so clever, when Tom 
called out, “ Now then, Magsie! ” 

Nothing but long meditation and preconcerted arrange¬ 
ment of effects could have enabled Tom to present so strik¬ 
ing a figure as he did to Maggie when she looked up. 
Dissatisfied with the pacific aspect of a face which had no 
more than the faintest hint of flaxen eyebrow, together with 
a pair of amiable blue-gray eyes and round pink cheeks 
that refused to look formidable, let him frown as he would 
before the looking-glass (Philip had once told him of a man 
who had a horseshoe frown, and Tom had tried with all his 
frowning might to make a horseshoe on his forehead), he had 
had recourse to that unfailing source of the terrible, burnt 
cork, and had made himself a pair of black eyebrows that 


SCHOOL-TIME 


193 


met in a satisfactory manner over his nose, and were 
matched by a less carefully adjusted blackness! about 
the chin. He had wound a red handkerchief round his 
cloth cap to give it the air of a turban, and his red com¬ 
forter across his breast as a scarf, — an amount of red 
which, with the tremendous frown on his brow, and the 
decision with which he grasped the sword, as he held it 
with its point resting on the ground, would suffice to con¬ 
vey an approximate idea of his fierce and bloodthirsty 
disposition. 

Maggie looked bewildered for a moment, and Tom en¬ 
joyed that moment keenly; but in the next she laughed, 
clapped her hands together, and said, “ Oh, Tom, you’ve 
made yourself like Bluebeard at the show.” 

It was clear she had not been struck with the presence 
of the sword, — it was not unsheathed. Her frivolous mind 
required a more direct appeal to its sense of the terrible, 
and Tom prepared for his master-stroke. Frowning with 
a double amount of intention, if not of corrugation, he 
(carefully) drew the sword from its sheath, and pointed it 
at Maggie. 

“ Oh, Tom, please don’t! ” exclaimed Maggie, in a tone of 
suppressed dread, shrinking away from him into the op¬ 
posite corner. “I shall scream — I’m sure I shall! Oh, 
don’t! I wish I’d never come upstairs! ” 

The corners of Tom’s mouth showed.an inclination to a 
smile of complacency that was immediately checked as in¬ 
consistent with the severity of a great warrior. Slowly he 
let down the scabbard on the floor, lest it should make too 
much noise, and then said sternly, — 

“ I’m the Duke of Wellington! March! ” stamping for¬ 
ward with the right leg a little bent, and the sword still 
pointing toward Maggie, who, trembling, and with tear- 
filled eyes, got upon the bed, as the only means of widening 
the space between them. 

Tom, happy in this spectator of his military performances, 
even though the spectator was only Maggie, proceeded, with 
the utmost exertion of his force, to such an exhibition of 


194 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


the cut and thrust as would necessarily be expected of the 
Duke of Wellington. 

“ Tom, I will not bear it, I will scream,” said Maggie, at 
the first movement of the sword. “ You’ll hurt yourself; 
you’ll cut your head off! ” 

“ One — two,” said Tom, resolutely, though at “ two ” 
his wrist trembled a little. “ Three ” came more slowly, 
and with it the sword swung downward, and Maggie gave 
a loud shriek. The sword had fallen, with its edge on Tom’s 
foot, and in a moment after he had fallen too. Maggie 
leaped from the bed, still shrieking, and immediately there 
was a rush of footsteps toward the room. Mr. Stelling, 
from his upstairs study, was the first to enter. He found 
both the children on the floor. Tom had fainted, and 
Maggie was shaking him by the collar of his jacket, scream¬ 
ing, with wild eyes. She thought he was dead, poor child! 
and yet she shook him, as if that would bring him back to 
life. In another minute she was sobbing with joy because 
Tom opened his eyes. She couldn’t sorrow yet that he had 
hurt his foot; it seemed as if all happiness lay in his being 
alive. 


CHAPTER VI 

A LOVE SCENE 

P OOR Tom bore his severe pain heroically, and was reso¬ 
lute in not “ telling ” of Mr. Poulter more than was 
unavoidable; the five-shilling piece remained a secret even to 
Maggie. But there was a terrible dread weighing on his 
mind, so terrible that he dared not even ask the question 
which might bring the fatal “ yes ” ; he dared not ask the 
surgeon or Mr. Stelling, “ Shall I be lame, sir ? ” He 
mastered himself so as not to cry out at the pain; but when 
his foot had been dressed, and he was left alone with 
Maggie seated by his bedside, the children sobbed together, 
with their heads laid on the same pillow. Tom was think- 


SCHOOL-TIME 


195 


ing of himself walking about on crutches, like the wheel¬ 
wright’s son; and Maggie, who did not guess what was in 
his mind, sobbed for company. It had not occurred to the 
surgeon or to Mr. Stelling to anticipate this dread in Tom’s 
mind, and to reassure him by hopeful words. But Philip 
watched the surgeon out of the house, and waylaid Mr. 
Stelling to ask the very question that Tom had not dared 
to ask for himself. 

“ I beg your pardon, sir, — but does Mr. Askern say 
Tulliver will be lame? ” 

“Oh, no; oh, no,” said Mr. Stelling, “not permanently; 
only for a little while.” 

“Did he tell Tulliver so, sir, do you think?” 

“No; nothing was said to him on the subject.” 

“ Then may I go and tell him, sir ? ” 

“ Yes, to be sure; now you mention it, I dare say he may 
be troubling about that. Go to his bedroom, but be very 
quiet at present.” 

It had been Philip’s first thought when he heard of the 
accident, — “Will Tulliver be lame? It will be very hard 
for him if he is ” ; and Tom’s hitherto unforgiven offences 
were washed out by that pity. Philip felt that they were 
no longer in a state of repulsion, but were being drawn 
into a common current of suffering and sad privation. His 
imagination did not dwell on the outward calamity and 
its future effect on Tom’s life, but it made vividly present 
to him the probable state of Tom’s feeling. Philip had 
only lived fourteen years, but those years had, most of 
them, been steeped in the sense of a lot irremediably 
hard. 

“ Mr. Askern says you’ll soon be all right again, Tulliver, 
did you know? ” he said rather timidly, as he stepped gently 
up to Tom’s bed. “ I’ve just been to ask Mr. Stelling, and 
he says you’ll walk as well as ever again by-and-by.” 

Tom looked up with that momentary stopping of the 
breath which comes with a sudden joy; then he gave a 
long sigh, and turned his blue-gray eyes straight on Philip’s. 
face, as he had not done for a fortnight or more. As for 


196 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


Maggie, this intimation of a possibility she had not thought 
of before affected her as a new trouble; the bare idea of 
Tom’s being always lame overpowered the assurance that 
such a misfortune was not likely to befall him, and she 
clung to him and cried afresh. 

“ Don’t be a little silly, Magsie,” said Tom, tenderly, 
feeling very brave now. “ I shall soon get well.” 

“ Good-by, Tulliver,” said Philip, putting out his small, 
delicate hand, which Tom clasped immediately with his 
more substantial fingers. 

“ I say,” said Tom, “ ask Mr. Stelling to let you come 
and sit with me sometimes, till I get up again, Wakem; and 
tell me about Robert Bruce, you know.” 

After that, Philip spent all his time out of school-hours 
with Tom and Maggie. Tom liked to hear fighting stories 
as much as ever, but he insisted strongly on the fact that 
those great fighters, who did so many wonderful things 
and came off unhurt, wore excellent armor from head to 
foot, which made fighting easy work, he considered. He 
should not have hurt his foot if he had had an iron shoe on. 
He listened with great interest to a new story of Philip’s 
about a man who had a very bad wound in his foot, and 
cried out so dreadfully with the pain that his friends could 
bear with him no longer, but put him ashore on a desert 
island, with nothing but some wonderful poisoned arrows 
to kill animals with for food. 

“ I didn’t roar out a bit, you know,” Tom said, “ and I 
dare say my foot was as bad as his. It’s cowardly to 
roar.” 

But Maggie would have it that when anything hurt you 
very much, it was quite permissible to cry out, and it was 
cruel of people not to bear it. She wanted to know if 
Philoctetes had a sister, and why she didn’t go with him on 
the desert island and take care of him. 

One day, soon after Philip had told this story, he and 
Maggie were in the study alone together while Tom’s foot 
was being dressed. Philip was at his books, and Maggie, 
after sauntering idly round the room, not caring to do any- 


SCHOOL-TIME 


197 


thing in particular, because she would soon go to Tom 
again, went and leaned on the table near Philip to see 
what he was doing, for they were quite old friends now, 
and perfectly at home with each other. 

“ What are you reading about in Greek? ” she said. “ It’s 
poetry, I can see that, because the lines are so short.” 

“ It’s about Philoctetes, the lame man I was telling you 
of yesterday,” he answered, resting his head on his hand, 
and looking at her as if he were not at all sorry to be in¬ 
terrupted. Maggie, in her absent way, continued to lean 
forward, resting on her arms and moving her feet about, 
while her dark eyes got more and more fixed and vacant, 
as if she had quite forgotten Philip and his book. 

“ Maggie,” said Philip, after a minute or two, still lean¬ 
ing on his elbow and looking at her, “ if you had had a 
brother like me, do you think you should have loved him as 
well as Tom ? ” 

Maggie started a little on being roused from her reverie, 
and said, “What?” Philip repeated his question. 

“ Oh, yes, better,” she answered immediately. “ No, not 
oetter; because I don’t think I could love you better than 
Tom. But I should be.so sorry, — so sorry for you.” 

Philip colored; he had meant to imply, would she love 
him as well in spite of his deformity, and yet when she 
alluded to it so plainly, he winced under her pity. Maggie, 
young as she was, felt her mistake. Hitherto she had in¬ 
stinctively behaved as if she were quite unconscious of 
Philip’s deformity; her own keen sensitiveness and expe¬ 
rience under family criticism sufficed to teach her this 
as well as if she had been directed by the most finished 
breeding. 

“ But you are so very clever, Philip, and you can play 
and sing,” she added quickly. “ I wish you were my brother. 
I’m very fond of you. And you would stay at home with 
me when Tom went out, and you would teach me every¬ 
thing; wouldn’t you, — Greek and everything?” 

“But you’ll go away soon, and go to school, Maggie,” 
said Philip, “ and then you’ll forget all about me, and not 


198 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


care for me any more. And then I shall see you when you’re 
grown up, and you’ll hardly take any notice of me.” 

“ Oh, no, I sha’n’t forget you, I’m sure,” said Maggie, 
shaking her head very seriously. “ I never forget anything, 
and I think about everybody when I’m away from them. 
I think about poor Yap; he’s got a lump in his throat, and 
Luke says he’ll die. Only don’t you tell Tom, because it 
will vex him so. You never saw Yap; he’s a queer little 
dog, — nobody cares about him but Tom and me.” 

“ Do you care as much about me as you do about Yap, 
Maggie ? ” said Philip, smiling rather sadly. 

“ Oh, yes, I should think so,” said Maggie, laughing. 

“ I’m very fond of you, Maggie; I shall never forget 
you,” said Philip, “ and when I’m very unhappy, I shall 
always think of you, and wish I had a sister with dark 
eyes, just like yours.” 

“ Why do you like my eyes ? ” said Maggie, well pleased. 
She had never heard any one but her father speak of her 
eyes as if they had merit. 

“ I don’t know,” said Philip. “ They’re not like any other 
eyes. They seem trying to speak, — trying to speak kindly. 
I don’t like other people to look at me much, but I like you 
to look at me, Maggie.” 

“ Why, I think you’re fonder of me than Tom is,” said 
Maggie, rather sorrowfully. Then, wondering how she could 
convince Philip that she could like him just as well, al¬ 
though he was crooked, she said: 

“ Should you like me to kiss you, as I do Tom ? I will, 
if you like.” 

“ Yes, very much; nobody kisses me.” 

Maggie put her arm round his neck and kissed him quite 
earnestly. 

“ There now,” she said, “ I shall always remember you, 
and kiss you when I see you again, if it’s ever so long. But 
I’ll go now, because I think Mr. Askern’s done with Tom’s 
foot.” 

When their father came the second time, Maggie said to 
him, “ Oh, father, Philip Wakem is so very good to Tom; 


SCHOOL-TIME 


199 


he is such a clever boy, and I do love him. And you love 
him too, Tom, don’t you? Say you love him,” she added 
entreatingly. 

Tom colored a little as he looked at his- father, and 
said: “ I sha’n’t be friends with him when I leave school, 
father; but we’ve made it up now, since my foot has been 
bad, and he’s taught me to play at draughts, and I can beat 
him.” 

“ Well, well,” said Mr. Tulliver, “ if he’s good to you, try 
and make him amends, and be good to him. He’s a poor 
crooked creature, and takes after his dead mother. But 
don’t you be getting too thick with him; he’s got his 
father’s blood in him too. Ay, ay, the gray colt may chance 
to kick like his black sire.” 

The jarring natures of the two boys effected what Mr. 
Tulliver’s admonition alone might have failed to effect; in 
spite of Philip’s new kindness, and Tom’s answering regard 
in this time of his trouble, they never became close friends. 
When Maggie was gone, and when Tom by-and-by began 
to walk about as usual, the friendly warmth that had been 
kindled by pity and gratitude died out by degrees, and left 
them in their old relation to each other. Philip was often 
peevish and contemptuous; and Tom’s more specific and 
kindly impressions gradually melted into the old back¬ 
ground of suspicion, and dislike toward him as a queer 
fellow, a humpback, and the son of a rogue. If boys and 
men are to be welded together in the glow of transient feel¬ 
ing, they must be made of metal that will mix, else they 
inevitably fall asunder when the heat dies out. 




CHAPTER VII 

THE GOLDEN GATES ARE PASSED 

S O Tom went on even to the fifth half-year — till he was 
turned sixteen — at King’s Lorton, while Maggie was 
growing with a rapidity which her aunts considered highly 
reprehensible, at Miss Firniss’s boarding-school in the an¬ 
cient town of Laceham on the Floss, with cousin Lucy for 
her companion. In her early letters to Tom she had always 
sent her love to Philip, and asked many questions about 
him, which were answered by brief sentences about Tom’s 
toothache, and a turf-house which he was helping to build 
in the garden, with other items of that kind. She was 
pained to hear Tom say in the holidays that Philip was as 
queer as ever again, and often cross. They were no longer 
very good friends, she perceived; and when she reminded 
Tom that he ought always to love Philip for being so good 
to him when his foot was bad, he answered: “Well, it isn’t 
my fault; 7 don’t do anything to him.” She hardly ever 
saw Philip during the remainder of their school-life; in the 
Midsummer holidays he was always away at the seaside, and 
at Christmas she could only meet him at long intervals in the 
200 



SCHOOL-TIME 


201 


streets of St. Ogg’s. When they did meet, she remembered 
her promise to kiss him, but, as a young lady who had been 
at a boarding-school, she knew now that such a greeting 
was out of the question, and Philip would not expect it. The 
promise was void, like so many other sweet, illusory prom¬ 
ises of our childhood; void as promises made in Eden before 
the seasons were divided, and when the starry blossoms 
grew side by side with the ripening peach, — impossible to 
be fulfilled when the golden gates had been passed. 

But when their father was actually engaged in the long- 
threatened lawsuit, and Wakem, as the agent at once of 
Pivart and Old Harry, was acting against him, even Maggie 
felt, with some sadness, that they were not likely ever to 
have any intimacy with Philip again; the very name of 
Wakem made her father angry, and she had once heard 
him say that if that crook-backed son lived to inherit his 
father’s ill-gotten gains, there would be a curse upon him. 
“ Have as little to do with him at school as you can, my 
lad,” he said to Tom; and the command was obeyed the 
more easily because Mr. Stelling by this time had two ad¬ 
ditional pupils; for though this gentleman’s rise in the world 
was not of that meteor-like rapidity which the admirers 
of his extemporaneous eloquence had expected for a preacher 
whose voice demanded so wide a sphere, he had yet enough 
of growing prosperity to enable him to increase his expendi¬ 
ture in continued disproportion to his income. 

As for Tom’s school course, it went on with mill-like 
monotony, his mind continuing to move with a slow, half- 
stifled pulse in a medium of uninteresting or unintelligible 
ideas. But each vacation he brought home larger and 
larger drawings with the satiny rendering of landscape, and 
water-colors in vivid greens, together with manuscript books 
full of exercises and problems, in which the handwriting was 
all the finer because he gave his whole mind to it. Each 
vacation he brought home a new book or two, indicating his 
progress through different stages of history, Christian doc¬ 
trine, and Latin literature; and that passage was not en¬ 
tirely without result, besides the possession of the books. 


202 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


Tom’s ear and tongue had become accustomed to a great 
many words and phrases which are understood to be signs 
of an educated condition; and though he had never really 
applied his mind to any one of his lessons, the lessons had 
left a deposit of vague, fragmentary, ineffectual notions. 
Mr. Tulliver, seeing signs of acquirement beyond the reach 
of his own criticism, thought it was probably all right with 
Tom’s education; he observed, indeed, that there were no 
maps, and not enough “ summing ” ; but he made no formal 
complaint to Mr. Stelling. It was a puzzling business, this 
schooling; and if he took Tom away, where could he send 
him with better effect? 

By the time Tom had reached his last quarter at King’s 
Lorton, the years had made striking changes in him since 
the day we saw him returning from Mr. Jacobs’s academy. 
He was a tall youth now, carrying himself without the 
least awkwardness, and speaking without more shyness than 
was a becoming symptom of blended diffidence and pride; 
he wore his tail-coat and his stand-up collars, and watched 
the down on his lip with eager impatience, looking every 
day at his virgin razor, with which he had provided him¬ 
self in the last holidays. Philip had already left, — at the 
autumn quarter, — that he might go to the south for the 
winter, for the sake of his health; and this change helped 
to give Tom the unsettled, exultant feeling that usually be¬ 
longs to the last months before leaving school. This quarter, 
too, there was some hope of his father’s lawsuit being de¬ 
cided; that made the prospect of home more entirely pleas¬ 
urable. For Tom, who had gathered his view of the case 
from his father’s conversation, had no doubt that Pivart 
would be beaten. 

Tom had not heard anything from home for some weeks, 
— a fact which did not surprise him, for his father and 
mother were not apt to manifest their affection in unneces¬ 
sary letters, — when, to his great surprise, on the morning 
of a dark, cold day near the end of November, he was told, 
soon after entering the study at nine o’clock, that his sister 
was in the drawing-room. It was Mrs. Stelling who had 


SCHOOL-TIME 203 

come into the study to tell him, and she left him to enter 
the drawing-room alone. 

Maggie, too, was tall now, with braided and coiled hair; 
she was almost as tali' as Tom, though she was only thirteen; 
and she really looked older than he did at that moment. 
She had thrown off her bonnet, her heavy braids were 
pushed back from her forehead, as if it would not bear that 
extra load, and her young face had a strangely worn look, 
as her eyes turned anxiously toward the door. When Tom 
entered she did not speak, but only went up to him, put her 
arms round his neck, and kissed him earnestly. He was 
used to various moods of hers, and felt no alarm at the 
unusual seriousness of her greeting. 

“ Why, how is it you’re come so early this cold morning, 
Maggie? Did you come in the gig?” said Tom, as she 
backed toward the sofa, and drew him to her side. 

“No, I came by the coach. I’ve walked from the turn¬ 
pike.” 

“ But how is it you’re not at school ? The holidays have 
not begun yet?” 

“ Father wanted me at home,” said Maggie, with a slight 
trembling of the lip. “ I came home three or four days 
ago.” 

“ Isn’t my father well ? ” said Tom, rather anxiously. 

“ Not quite,” said Maggie. “ He’s very unhappy, Tom. 
The lawsuit is ended, and I came to tell you because I 
thought it would be better for you to know it before you 
came home, and I didn’t like only to send you a letter.” 

“ My father hasn’t lost ? ” said Tom, hastily, springing 
from the sofa, and standing before Maggie with his hands 
suddenly thrust in his pockets. 

“ Yes, dear Tom,” said Maggie, looking up at him with 
trembling. 

Tom was silent a minute or two, with his eyes fixed on the 
floor. Then he said: 

“My father will have to pay a good deal of money, 
then? ” 

“ Yes,” said Maggie, rather faintly. 


204 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


“ Well, it can’t be helped,” said Tom, bravely, not trans¬ 
lating the loss of a large sum of money into any tangible 
results. “ But my father’s very much vexed, I dare say? ” 
he added, looking at Maggie, and thinking that her agitated 
face was only part of her girlish way of taking things. 

“ Yes,” said Maggie, again faintly. Then, urged to fuller 
speech by Tom’s freedom from apprehension, she said 
loudly and rapidly, as if the words would burst from her: 

“ Oh, Tom, he will lose the mill and the land and every¬ 
thing; he will have nothing left.” 

Tom’s eyes flashed out one look of surprise at her, be¬ 
fore he turned pale, and trembled visibly. He said nothing, 
but sat down on the sofa again, looking vaguely out of the 
opposite window. 

Anxiety about the future had never entered Tom’s mind. 
His father had always ridden a good horse, kept a good 
house, and had the cheerful, confident air of a man who 
has plenty of property to fall back upon. Tom had never 
dreamed that his father would “ fail ” ; that was a form of 
misfortune which he had always heard spoken of as a deep 
disgrace, and disgrace was an idea that he could not as¬ 
sociate with any of his relations, least of all with his father. 
A proud sense of family respectability was part of the 
very air Tom had been born and brought up in. He knew 
there were people in St. Ogg’s who made a show without 
money to support it, and he had always heard such people 
spoken of by his own friends with contempt and reproba¬ 
tion. He had a strong belief, which was a lifelong habit, 
and required no definite evidence to rest on, that his father 
could spend a great deal of money if he chose; and since 
his education at Mr. Stelling’s had given him a more ex¬ 
pensive view of life, he had often thought that when he 
got older he would make a figure in the world, with his 
horse and dogs and saddle, and other accoutrements of a 
fine young man, and show himself equal to any of his con¬ 
temporaries at St. Ogg’s, who might consider themselves a 
grade above him in society, because their fathers were pro¬ 
fessional men, or had large oil-mills. As to the prognostics 


SCHOOL-TIME 


205 


and headshaking of his aunts and uncles, they had never 
produced the least effect on him, except to make him think 
that aunts and uncles were disagreeable society; he had 
heard them find fault in much the same way as long as he 
could remember. His father knew better than they did. 

The down had come on Tom's lip, yet his thoughts and 
expectations had been hitherto only the reproduction, in 
changed forms, of the boyish dreams in which he had lived 
three years ago. He was awakened now with a violent 
shock. 

Maggie was frightened at Tom's pale, trembling silence. 
There was something else to tell him, — something worse. 
She threw her arms round him at last, and said, with a half 
sob: 

“ Oh, Tom —dear, dear Tom, don't fret too much; try 
and bear it well.'' 

Tom turned his cheek passively to meet her entreating 
kisses, and there gathered a moisture in his eyes, which he 
just rubbed away with his hand. The action seemed to 
rouse him, for he shook himself and said: “ I shall go home 
with you, Maggie. Didn't my father say I was to go ? " 

“ No, Tom, father didn't wish it," said Maggie, her anx¬ 
iety about his feeling helping her to master her agitation. 
What would he do when she told him all? “ But mother 
wants you to come, — poor mother!—she cries so. Oh, 
Tom, it's very dreadful at home.” 

Maggie's lips grew whiter, and she began to tremble al¬ 
most as Tom had done. The two poor things clung closer 
to each other, both trembling, — the one at an unshapen 
fear, the other at the image of a terrible certainty. When 
Maggie spoke, it was hardly above a whisper. 

“ And — and — poor father-" 

Maggie could not utter it. But the suspense was in¬ 
tolerable to Tom. A vague idea of going to prison, as a 
consequence of debt, was the shape his fears had begun to 
take. 

“ Where's my father? " he said impatiently. " Tell me, 
Maggie." 


206 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


“ He’s at home,” said Maggie, finding it easier to reply 
to that question. “ But,” she added, after a pause, * not 
himself — he fell off his horse. He has known nobody but 
me ever since — he seems to have lost his senses. 0 father, 
father-” 

With these last words, Maggie’s sobs burst forth with 
the more violence for the previous struggle against them. 
Tom felt that pressure of the heart which forbids tears; he 
had no distinct vision of their troubles as Maggie had, who 
had been at home; he only felt the crushing weight t>f 
what seemed unmitigated misfortune. He tightened his 
arm almost convulsively round Maggie as she sobbed, but 
his face looked rigid and tearless, his eyes blank, — as if a 
black curtain of cloud had suddenly fallen on his path. 

But Maggie soon checked herself abruptly; a single 
thought had acted on her like a startling sound. 

“We must set out, Tom, we must not stay. Father will 
miss me; we must be at the turnpike at ten to meet the 
coach.” She said this with hasty decision, rubbing her eyes, 
and rising to seize her bonnet. 

Tom at once felt the same impulse, and rose too. “ Wait 
a minute, Maggie,” he said. “ I must speak to Mr. Stel- 
ling, and then we’ll go.” 

He thought he must go to the study where the pupils 
were; but on his way he met Mr. Stelling, who had heard 
from his wife that Maggie appeared to be in trouble when 
she asked for her brother, and now that he thought the 
brother and sister had been alone long enough, was coming 
to inquire and offer his sympathy. 

“ Please, sir, I must go home,” Tom said abruptly, as he 
met Mr. Stelling in the passage. “ I must go back with my 
sister directly. My father’s lost his lawsuit — he’s lost all 
his property, — and he’s very ill.” 

Mr. Stelling felt like a kind-hearted man; he foresaw a 
probable money loss for himself, but this had no appre¬ 
ciable share in his feeling, while he looked with grave pity 
at the brother and sister for whom youth and sorrow had 
begun together. When he knew how Maggie had come, and 


SCHOOL-TIME 


207 


how eager she was to get home again, he hurried their de¬ 
parture, only whispering something to Mrs. Stelling, who 
had followed him, and who immediately left the room. 

Tom and Maggie were standing on the door-step, ready 
to set out, when Mrs. Stelling came with a little basket, 
which she hung on Maggie’s arm, saying: “ Do remember to 
eat something on the way, dear.” Maggie’s heart went out 
toward this woman whom she bad never liked, and she 
kissed her silently. It was the first sign within the poor 
child of that new sense which is the gift of sorrow, — that 
susceptibility to the bare offices of humanity which raises 
them into a bond of loving fellowship, as to haggard men 
among the icebergs the mere presence of an ordinary com¬ 
rade stirs the deep fountains of affection. 

Mr. Stelling put his hand on Tom’s shoulder and said: 
“ God bless you, my boy; let me know how you get on.” 
Then he pressed Maggie’s hand; but there were no audible 
good-byes. Tom had so often thought how joyful he should 
be the day he left school “ for good ” ! And now his school 
years seemed like a holiday that had come to an end. 

The two slight youthful figures soon grew indistinct on 
the distant road, — were soon lost behind the projecting 
hedgerow. 

They had gone forth together into their new life of 
sorrow, and they would never more see the sunshine un¬ 
dimmed by remembered cares. They had entered the thorny 
wilderness, and the golden gates of their childhood had 
forever closed behind them. 


/#r 



BOOK III —THE DOWNFALL 

’CHAPTER I 

WHAT HAD HAPPENED AT HOME 

W HEN Mr. Tulliver first knew the fact that the law¬ 
suit was decided against him, and that Pivart and 
Wakem were triumphant, every one who happened to ob¬ 
serve him at the time thought that, for so confident and 
hot-tempered a man, he bore the blow remarkably well. 
He thought so himself; he thought he was going to show 
that if Wakem or anybody else considered him crushed, they 
would find themselves mistaken. He could not refuse to 
see that the costs of this protracted suit would take more 
than he possessed to pay them; but he appeared to him¬ 
self to be full of expedients by which he could ward off 
any results but such as were tolerable, and could avoid 
the appearance of breaking down in the world. All the 
obstinacy and defiance of his nature, driven out of their 
old channel, found a vent for themselves in the immediate 
formation of plans by which he would meet his difficulties, 
and remain Mr. Tulliver of Dorlcote Mill in spite of them. 

208 


THE DOWNFALL 


209 


There was such a rush of projects in his brain, that it was 
no wonder his face was flushed when he came away from 
his talk with his attorney, Mr. Gore, and mounted his horse 
to ride home from Lindum. There was Furley, who held 
the mortgage on the land, — a reasonable fellow, who would 
see his own interest, Mr. Tulliver was convinced, and who 
would be glad not only to purchase the whole estate, includ¬ 
ing the mill and homestead, but would accept Mr. Tulliver 
as tenant, and be willing to advance money to be repaid with 
high interest out of the profits of the business, which would 
be made over to him, Mr. Tulliver only taking enough 
barely to maintain himself and his family. Who would 
neglect such a profitable investment? Certainly not Fur- 
ley, for Mr. Tulliver had determined that Furley should 
meet his plans with the utmost alacrity; and there are men 
whose brains have not yet been dangerously heated by the 
loss of a lawsuit, who are apt to see in their own interest 
or desires a motive for other men’s actions. There was no 
doubt (in the miller’s mind) that Furley would do just what 
was desirable; and if he did — why, things would not be so 
very much worse. Mr. Tulliver and his family must live 
more meagrely and humbly, but it would only be till the 
profits of the business had paid off Furley’s advances, and 
that might be while Mr. Tulliver had still a good many years 
of life before him. It was clear that the costs of the suit 
could be paid without his being obliged to turn out of his 
old place, and look like a ruined man. It was certainly an 
awkward moment in his affairs. There was that surety¬ 
ship for poor Riley, who had died suddenly last April, and 
left his friend saddled with a debt of two hundred and 
fifty pounds, — a fact which had helped to make Mr. Tul- 
liver’s banking book less pleasant reading than a man might 
desire toward Christmas. Well! he had never been one of 
those poor-spirited sneaks who would refuse to give a help¬ 
ing hand to a fellow-traveller in this puzzling world. The 
really vexatious business was the fact that some months ago 
the creditor who had lent him the five hundred pounds to re¬ 
pay Mrs. Glegg had become uneasy about his money (set on 


210 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


by Wakem, of course), and Mr. Tulliver, still confident that 
he should gain his suit, and finding it eminently incon¬ 
venient to raise the said sum until that desirable issue had 
taken place, had rashly acceded to the demand that he 
should give a bill of sale on his household furniture and some 
other effects, as security in lieu of the bond. It was all one, 
he had said to himself; he should soon pay off the money, 
and there was no harm in giving that security any more 
than another. 

But now the consequences of this bill of sale occurred to 
him in a new light, and he remembered that the time was 
close at hand when it would be enforced unless the money 
were repaid. Two months ago he would have declared 
stoutly that he would never be beholden to his wife’s friends; 
but now he told himself as stoutly that it was nothing but 
right and natural that Bessy should go to the Pullets and 
explain the thing to them; they would hardly let Bessy’s 
furniture be sold, and it might be security to Pullet if he 
advanced the money, — there would, after all, be no gift or 
favor in the matter. Mr. Tulliver would never have asked 
for anything from so poor-spirited a fellow for himself, but 
Bessy might do so if she liked. 

It is precisely the proudest and most obstinate men who 
are the most liable to shift their position and contradict 
themselves in this sudden manner; everything is easier to 
them than to face the simple fact that they have been 
thoroughly defeated, and must begin life anew. And Mr. 
Tulliver, you perceive, though nothing more than a superior 
miller and maltster, was as proud and obstinate as if he 
had been a very lofty personage, in whom such dispositions 
might be a source of that conspicuous, far-echoing tragedy, 
which sweeps the stage in regal robes, and makes the dullest 
chronicler sublime. The pride and obstinacy of millers and 
other insignificant people, whom you pass unnoticingly on 
the road every day, have their tragedy too; blit it is of 
that unwept, hidden sort that goes on from generation to 
generation, and leaves no record, — such tragedy, perhaps, 
as lies in the conflicts of young souls, hungry for joy, under 


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211 


a lot made suddenly hard to them, under the dreariness of 
a home where the morning brings no promise with it, and 
where the unexpectant discontent of worn and disappointed 
parents weighs on the children like a damp, thick air, in 
which all the functions of life are depressed; or such trag¬ 
edy as lies in the slow or sudden death that follows on a 
bruised passion, though it may be a death that finds only 
a parish funeral. There are certain animals to which te¬ 
nacity of position is a law of life, — they can never flourish 
again, after a single wrench: and there are certain human 
beings to whom predominance is a law of life, — they can 
only sustain humiliation so long as they can refuse to believe 
in it, and, in their own conception, predominate still. 

Mr. Tulliver was still predominating, in his own imagina¬ 
tion, as he approached St. Ogg’s, through which he had to 
pass on his way homeward. But what was it that sug¬ 
gested to him, as he saw the Laceham coach entering the 
town, to follow it to the coach-office, and get the clerk 
there to write a letter, requiring Maggie to come home the 
very next day? Mr. Tulliver’s own hand shook too much 
under his excitement for him to write himself, and he 
wanted the letter to be given to the coachman to deliver 
at Miss Firniss’s school in the morning. There was a crav¬ 
ing which he would not account for to himself, to have 
Maggie near him, without delay, — she must come back 
by the coach to-morrow. 

To Mrs. Tulliver, when he got home, he would admit no 
difficulties, and scolded down her burst of grief on hearing 
that the lawsuit was lost, by angry assertions that there was 
nothing to grieve about. He said nothing to her that night 
about the bill of sale and the application to Mrs. Pullet, for 
he had kept her in ignorance of the nature of that transac¬ 
tion, and had explained the necessity for taking an inventory 
of the goods as a matter connected with his will. The 
possession of a wife conspicuously one’s inferior in intellect 
is, like other high privileges, attended with a few incon¬ 
veniences, and, among the rest, with the occasional necessity 
for using a little deception. 


212 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


The next day Mr. Tulliver was again on horseback in 
the afternoon, on his way to Mr. Gore’s office at St. Ogg’s. 
Gore was to have seen Furley in the morning, and to have 
sounded him in relation to Mr. Tulliver’s affairs. But he 
had not gone half-way when he met a clerk from Mr. Gore’s 
office, who was bringing a letter to Mr. Tulliver. Mr. Gore 
had been prevented by a sudden call of business from wait¬ 
ing at his office to see Mr. Tulliver, according to appoint¬ 
ment, but would be at his office at eleven to-morrow morn¬ 
ing, and meanwhile had sent some important information 
by letter. 

“ Oh! ” said Mr. Tulliver, taking the letter, but not open¬ 
ing it. “ Then tell Gore I’ll see him to-morrow at eleven 
and he turned his horse. 

The clerk, struck with Mr. Tulliver’s glistening, excited 
glance, looked after him for a few moments, and then rode 
away. The reading of a letter was not the affair of an 
instant to Mr. Tulliver; he took in the sense of a statement 
very slowly through the medium of written or even printed 
characters; so he had put the letter in his pocket, thinking 
he would open it in his arm-chair at home. But by-and-by 
it occurred to him that there might be something in the 
letter Mrs. Tulliver must not know about, and if so, it 
would be better to keep it out of her sight altogether. He 
stopped his horse, took out the letter, and read it. It was 
only a short letter; the substance was, that Mr. Gore had 
ascertained, on secret but sure authority, that Furley had 
been lately much straitened for money, and had parted with 
his securities, — among the rest, the mortgage on Mr. Tul¬ 
liver’s property, which he had transferred to-Wakem. 

In half an hour after this Mr. Tulliver’s own wagoner 
found him lying by the roadside insensible, with an open 
letter near him, and his gray horse snuffing uneasily about 
him. 

When Maggie reached home that evening, in obedience to 
her father’s call, he was no longer insensible. About an hour 
before he had become conscious, and after vague, vacant 
looks around him, had muttered something about “ a letter,” 


THE DOWNFALL 


213 


which he presently repeated impatiently. At the instance 
of Mr. Turnbull, the medical man, Gore’s letter was brought 
and laid on the bed, and the previous impatience seemed to 
be allayed. The stricken man lay for some time with his 
eyes fixed on the letter, as if he were trying to knit up 
his thoughts by its help. But presently a new wave of 
memory seemed to have come and swept the other away; 
he turned his eyes from the letter to the door, and after 
looking uneasily, as if striving to see something his eyes were 
too dim for, ho said, “ The little wench.” 

He repeated the words impatiently from time to time, 
appearing entirely unconscious of everything except this one 
importunate want, and giving no sign of knowing his wife 
or any one else; and poor Mrs. Tulliver, her feeble faculties 
almost paralyzed by this sudden accumulation of troubles, 
went backward and forward to the gate to see if the Lace- 
ham coach were coming, though it was not yet time. 

But it came at last, and set down the poor anxious girl, 
no longer the “little wench,” except to her father’s fond 
memory. 

“ Oh, mother, what is the matter ? ” Maggie said, with 
pale lips, as her mother came toward her crying. She 
didn’t think her father was ill, because the letter had come 
at his dictation from the office at St. Ogg’s. 

But Mr. Turnbull came now to meet her; a medical man 
is the good angel of the troubled house, and Maggie ran 
toward the kind old friend, whom she remembered as long 
as she could remember anything, with a trembling, ques¬ 
tioning look. 

“ Don’t alarm yourself too much, my dear,” he said, 
taking her hand. “Your father has had a sudden attack, 
and has not quite recovered his memory. But he has been 
asking for you, and it will do him good to see you. Keep as 
quiet as you can; take off your things, and come upstairs 
with me.” 

Maggie obeyed, with that terrible beating of the heart 
which makes existence seem simply a painful pulsation. 
The very quietness with which Mr. Turnbull spoke had 


214 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


frightened her susceptible imagination. Her father’s eyes 
were still turned uneasily toward the door when she entered 
and met the strange, yearning, helpless look that had been 
seeking her in vain. With a sudden flash and movement, he 
raised himself in the bed; she rushed toward him, and 
clasped him with agonized kisses. 

Poor child! it was very early for her to know one of 
those supreme moments in life when all we have hoped or 
delighted in, all we can dread or endure, falls away from 
our regard as insignificant; is lost, like a trivial memory, in 
that simple, primitive love which knits us to the beings 
who have been nearest to us, in their times of helplessness or 
of anguish. 

But that flash of recognition had been too great a strain 
on the father’s bruised, enfeebled powers. He sank back 
again in renewed insensibility and rigidity, which lasted 
for many hours, and was only broken by a flickering re¬ 
turn of consciousness, in which he took passively every¬ 
thing that was given to him, and seemed to have a sort of 
infantine satisfaction in Maggie’s near presence, — such sat¬ 
isfaction as a baby has when it is returned to the nurse’s lap. 

Mrs. Tulliver sent for her sisters, and there was much 
wailing and lifting up of hands below stairs. Both uncles 
and aunts saw that the ruin of Bessy-and her family was 
as complete as they had ever foreboded it, and there was 
a general family sense that a judgment had fallen on Mr. 
Tulliver, which it would be an impiety to counteract by 
too much kindness. But Maggie heard little of this, scarcely 
ever leaving her father’s bedside, where she sat opposite 
him with her hand on his. Mrs. Tulliver wanted to have 
Tom fetched home, and seemed to be thinking more of her 
boy even than of her husband; but the aunts and uncles 
opposed this. Tom was better at school, since Mr. Turn- 
bull said there was no immediate danger, he believed. But 
at the end of the second day, when Maggie had become more 
accustomed to her father’s fits of insensibility, and to the 
expectation that he would revive from them, the thought 
of Tom had become urgent with her too; and when her 


THE DOWNFALL 


215 


mother sate crying at night and saying, “ My poor lad — 
it’s nothing but right he should come home,” Maggie said, 
“ Let me go for him, and tell him, mother; Ill go to-morrow 
morning if father doesn't know me and want me. It would 
be so hard for Tom to come home and not know anything 
about it beforehand.” 

And the next morning Maggie went, as we have seen. 
Sitting on the coach on their way home, the brother and 
sister talked to each other in sad, interrupted whispers. 

“ They say Mr. Wakem has got a mortgage or some¬ 
thing on the land, Tom,” said Maggie. “ It was the letter 
with that news in it that made father ill, they think.” 

“ I believe that scoundrel's been planning all along to 
ruin my father,” said Tom, leaping from the vaguest im¬ 
pressions to a definite conclusion. “ I'll make him feel for 
it when I’m a man. Mind you never speak to Philip again.” 

“ Oh, Tom! ” said Maggie, in a tone of sad remonstrance; 
but she had no spirit to dispute anything then, still less 
to vex Tom by opposing him. 


CHAPTER II 

MRS. TULLIVER’S TERAPHIM, OR HOUSEHOLD GODS 

W HEN the coach set down Tom and Maggie, it was five 
hours since she had started from home, and she 
was thinking with some trembling that her father had per¬ 
haps missed her, and asked for “ the little wench ” in vain. 
She thought of no other change that might have happened. 

She hurried along the gravel-walk and entered the house 
before Tom; but in the entrance she was startled by a 
strong smell of tobacco. The parlor door was ajar; that 
was where the smell came from. It was very strange; could 
any visitor be smoking at a time like this? Was her mother 
there ? If so, she must be told that Tom was come. Maggie, 
after this pause of surprise, was only in the act of opening 
the door when Tom came up, and they both looked into 


216 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


the parlor together. There was a coarse, dingy man, of 
whose face Tom had some vague recollection, sitting in his 
father’s chair, smoking, with a jug and glass beside him. 

The truth flashed on Tom’s mind in an instant. To 
“ have the bailiff in the house,” and “ to be sold up,” were 
phrases which he had been used to, even as a little boy; 
they were part of the disgrace and misery of “ failing,” of 
losing all one’s money, and being ruined, — sinking into the 
condition of poor working people. It seemed only natural 
this should happen, since his father had lost all his property, 
and he thought of no more special cause for this particular 
form of misfortune than the loss of the lawsuit. But the 
immediate presence of this disgrace was so much keener an 
experience to Tom than the worst form of apprehension, 
that he felt at this moment as if his real trouble had only 
just begun; it was a touch on the irritated nerve compared 
with its spontaneous dull aching. 

“ How do you do, sir ? ” said the man taking the pipe 
out of his mouth, with rough, embarrassed civility. The 
two young startled faces made him a little uncomfortable. 

But Tom turned away hastily without speaking; the sight 
was too hateful. Maggie had not understood the appear¬ 
ance of this stranger, as Tom had. She followed him, 
whispering: “ Who can it be, Tom? What is the matter? ” 
Then, with a sudden undefined dread lest this stranger 
might have something to do with a change in her father, 
she rushed upstairs, checking herself at the bedroom door 
to throw off her bonnet, and enter on tiptoe. All was silent 
there; her father was lying, heedless of everything around 
him, with his eyes closed as when she had left him. A 
servant was there, but not her mother. 

“Where’s my mother?” she whispered. The servant 
did not know. 

Maggie hastened out, and said to Tom: “ Father is lying 
quiet; let us go and look for my mother. I wonder where 
she is.” 

Mrs. Tulliver was not downstairs, not in any of the bed¬ 
rooms. There was but one room below the attic which 


THE DOWNFALL 


217 


Maggie had left unsearched; it was the storeroom, where her 
mother kept all her linen and all the precious “ best things ” 
that were only unwrapped and brought out on special occa¬ 
sions. Tom, preceding Maggie as they returned along the 
passage, opened the door of this room, and immediately 
said, “ Mother! ” 

Mrs. Tulliver was seated there with all her laid-up treas¬ 
ures. One of the linen chests was open; the silver teapot 
was unwrapped from its many folds of paper, and the 
best china was laid out on the top of the closed linen chest; 
spoons and skewers and ladles were spread in rows on the 
shelves; and the poor woman was shaking her head and 
weeping, with a bitter tension of the mouth over the mark, 
“ Elizabeth Dodson,” on the corner of some tablecloths she 
held in her lap. 

She dropped them, and started up as Tom spoke. 

“ Oh, my boy, my boy! ” she said, clasping him round 
the neck. “ To think as I should live to see this day! We’re 
ruined — everything’s going to be sold up — to think as your 
father should have married me to bring me to this! We’ve 
got nothing — we shall be beggars —we must go to the 
workhouse-” 

She kissed him, then seated herself again, and took an¬ 
other tablecloth on her lap, unfolding it a little way to 
look at the pattern, while the children stood by in mute 
wretchedness, their minds quite filled for the moment with 
the words “ beggars ” and “ workhouse.” 

“ To think o’ these cloths as I spun myself,” she went on, 
lifting things out and turning them over with an excite¬ 
ment all the more strange and piteous because the stout 
blond woman was usually so passive, — if she had been 
ruffled before, it was at the surface merely, — “and Job 
Haxey wove ’em, and brought the piece home on his back, 
as I remember standing at the door and seeing him come, 
before I ever thought o’ marrying your father! And the 
pattern as I chose myself, and bleached so beautiful, and 
I marked*’em so as nobody ever saw such marking, — they 
must cut the cloth to get it out, for it’s a particular stitch. 


218 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


And they’re all to be sold, and go into strange people’s 
houses, and perhaps be cut with the knives, and wore out 
before I’m dead. You’ll never have one of ’em, my boy,” 
she said, looking up at Tom with her eyes full of tears, 
“ and I meant ’em for you. I wanted you to have all o’ 
this pattern. Maggie could have had the large check — it 
never shows so well when the dishes are on it.” 

Tom was touched to the quick, but there was an angry 
reaction immediately. His face flushed as he said: 

“ But will my aunts let them be sold, mother? Do they 
know about it?. They’ll never let your linen go, will they? 
Haven’t you sent to them? ” 

“ Yes, I sent Luke directly they’d put the bailies in, and 
your aunt Pullet’s been — and, oh dear, oh dear, she cries 
so and says your father’s disgraced my family and made it 
the talk o’ the country; and she’ll buy the spotted cloths 
for herself, because she’s never had so many as she wanted 
o’ that pattern, and they sha’n’t go to strangers, but she’s 
got more checks a’ready nor she can do with.” (Here Mrs. 
Tulliver began to lay back the tablecloths in the chest, fold¬ 
ing and stroking them automatically.) “ And your uncle 
Glegg’s been too, and he says things must be bought in for us 
to lie down on, but he must talk to your aunt; and they’re 
all coming to consult. But I know they’ll none of ’em take 
my chany,” she added, turning toward the cups and saucers, 
“ for they all found fault with ’em when I bought ’em, 
’cause o’ the small gold sprig all over ’em, between the 
flowers. But there’s none of ’em got better chany, not even 
your aunt Pullet herself; and I bought it wi’ my own 
money as I’d saved ever since I was turned fifteen; and 
the silver teapot, too, — your father never paid for ’em. 
And to think as he should ha’ married me, and brought me 
to this.” 

Mrs. Tulliver burst out crying afresh, and she sobbed with 
her handkerchief at her eyes a few moments, but then re¬ 
moving it, she said in a deprecating way, still half sobbing, 
as if she were called upon to speak before she could com¬ 
mand her voice,— 


THE DOWNFALL 


219 


“ And I did say to him times and times, ‘ Whativer you 
do, don’t go to law/ and what more could I do? I’ve had 
to sit by while my own fortin’s been spent, and what should 
ha’ been my children’s, too. You’ll have niver a penny, my 
boy — but it isn’t your poor mother’s fault.” 

She put out one arm toward Tom, looking up at him 
piteously with her helpless, childish blue eyes. The poor 
lad went to her and kissed her, and she clung to him. For 
the first time Tom thought of his father with some reproach. 
His natural inclination to blame, hitherto kept entirely 
in abeyance toward his father by the predisposition to think 
him always right, simply on the ground that he was Tom 
Tulliver’s father, was turned into this new channel by his 
mother’s plaints; and with his indignation against Wakem 
there began to mingle some indignation of another sort. 
Perhaps his father might have helped bringing them all 
down in the world, and making people talk of them with 
contempt, but no one should talk long of Tom Tulliver 
with contempt. The natural strength and firmness of 
his nature was beginning to assert itself, urged by the 
double stimulus of resentment against his aunts, and the 
sense that he must behave like a man and take care of his 
mother. 

“ Don’t fret, mother,” he said tenderly. “ I shall soon be 
able to get money; I’ll get a situation of some sort.” 

“ Bless you, my boy! ” said Mrs. Tulliver, a little soothed. 
Then, looking round sadly, “ But I shouldn’t ha’ minded so 
much if we could ha’ kept the things wi’ my name on ’em.” 

Maggie had witnessed this scene with gathering anger. 
The implied reproaches against her father — her father, who 
was lying there in a sort of living death — neutralized all 
her pity for griefs about tablecloths and china; and her 
anger on her father’s account was heightened by some ego¬ 
istic resentment at Tom’s silent concurrence with her mother 
in shutting her out from the common calamity. She had 
become almost indifferent to her mother’s habitual depre¬ 
ciation of her, but she was keenly alive to any sanction of 
it, however passive, that she might suspect in Tom. Poor 


220 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


Maggie was by no means made up of unalloyed devotedness, 
but put forth large claims for herself where she loved 
strongly. She burst out at last in an agitated, almost vio¬ 
lent tone: “ Mother, how can you talk so; as if you cared 
only for things with your name on, and not for what has 
my father’s name too; and to care about anything but dear 
father himself! — when he’s lying there, and may never 
speak to us again. Tom, you ought to say so too; you ought 
not to let any one find fault with my father.” 

Maggie, almost choked with mingled grief and anger, left 
the room, and took her old place on her father’s bed. Her 
heart went out to him with a stronger movement than ever, 
at the thought that people would blame him. Maggie hated 
blame; she had been blamed all her life, and nothing had 
come of it but evil tempers. Her father had always de¬ 
fended and excused her, and her loving remembrance of his 
tenderness was a force within, her that would enable her to 
do or bear anything for his sake. 

Tom was a little shocked at Maggie’s outburst, — telling 
him as well as his mother what it was right to do! She 
ought to have learned better than have those hectoring, as¬ 
suming manners, by this time. But he presently went into 
his father’s room, and the sight there touched him in a way 
that effaced the slighter impressions of the previous hour. 
When Maggie saw how he was moved, she went to him and 
put her arm round his neck as he sat by the bed, and the 
two children forgot everything else in the sense that they 
had one father and one sorrow. 


CHAPTER III 

THE FAMILY COUNCIL 

I T was at eleven o’clock the next morning that the aunts 
and uncles came to hold their consultation. The fire 
was lighted in the large parlor, and poor Mrs. Tulliver, with 
a confused impression that it was a great occasion, like a 


THE DOWNFALL 


221 


funeral, unbagged the bell-rope tassels, and unpinned the 
curtains, adjusting them in proper folds, looking round and 
shaking her head sadly at the polished tops and legs of the 
tables, which sister Pullet herself could not accuse of insuffi¬ 
cient brightness. 

Mr. Deane was not coming, he was away on business; but 
Mrs. Deane appeared punctually in that handsome new gig 
with the head to it, and the livery-servant driving it, which 
had thrown so clear a light on several traits in her character 
to some of her female friends in St. Ogg’s. Mr. Deane had 
been advancing in the world as rapidly as Mr. Tulliver had 
been going down in it; and in Mrs. Deane’s house the Dod¬ 
son linen and plate were beginning to hold quite a subordi¬ 
nate position, as a mere supplement to the handsomer arti¬ 
cles of the same kind, purchased in recent years, — a change 
which had caused an occasional coolness in the sisterly inter¬ 
course between her and Mrs. Glegg, who felt that Susan was 
getting “ like the rest,” and there would soon be little of the 
true Dodson spirit surviving except in herself, and, it might 
be hoped, in those nephews who supported the Dodson 
name on the family land, far away in the Wolds. People 
who live at a distance are naturally less faulty than those 
immediately under our own eyes; and it seems superfluous, 
when we consider the remote geographical position of the 
Ethiopians, and how very little the Greeks had to do with 
them, to inquire further why Homer calls them “ blameless.” 

Mrs. Deane was the first to arrive; and when she had 
taken her seat in the large parlor, Mrs. Tulliver came down 
to her with her comely face a little distorted, nearly as it 
would have been if she had been crying. She was not a 
woman who could shed abundant tears, except in moments 
when the prospect of losing her furniture became unusually 
vivid, but she felt how unfitting it was to be quite calm 
under present circumstances. 

“ Oh, sister, what a world this is! ” she exclaimed as she 
entered; “ what trouble, oh dear! ” 

Mrs. Deane was a thin-lipped woman, who made small 
well-considered speeches on peculiar occasions, repeating 


222 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


them afterward to her husband, and asking him if she had 
not spoken very properly. 

“ Yes, sister,” she said deliberately, “ this is a changing 
world, and we don’t know to-day what may happen to¬ 
morrow. But it’s right to be prepared for all things, and if 
trouble’s sent, to remember as it isn’t sent without a cause. 
I’m very sorry for you as a sister, and if the doctor orders 
jelly for Mr. Tulliver, I hope you’ll let me kn'ow. I’ll send 
it willingly; for it is but right he should have proper attend¬ 
ance while he’s ill.” 

“ Thank you, Susan,” said Mrs. Tulliver, rather faintly, 
withdrawing her fat hand from her sister’s thin one. “ But 
there’s been no talk o’ jelly yet.” Then after a moment’s 
pause she added, “ There’s a dozen o’ cut jelly-glasses up¬ 
stairs— I shall never put jelly into ’em no more.” 

Her voice was rather agitated as she uttered the last 
words, but the sound of wheels diverted her thoughts. Mr. 
and Mrs. Glegg were come, and were almost immediately 
followed by Mr. and Mrs. Pullet. 

Mrs. Pullet entered crying, as a compendious mode, at all 
times, of expressing what were her views of life in general, 
and what, in brief, were the opinions she held concerning the 
particular case before her. 

Mrs. Glegg had on her fuzziest front, and garments which 
appeared to have had a recent resurrection from rather a 
creasy form of burial; a costume selected with the high 
moral purpose of instilling perfect humility into Bessy and 
her children. 

“ Mrs. G., won’t you come nearer the fire? ” said her hus¬ 
band, unwilling to take the more comfortable seat without 
offering it to her. 

“ You see I’ve seated myself here, Mr. Glegg,” returned 
this superior woman; “ you can roast yourself, if you like.” 

“ Well,” said Mr. Glegg, seating himself good-humoredly, 
“ and how’s the poor man upstairs ? ” 

“ Dr. Turnbull thought him a deal better this morning,” 
said Mrs. Tulliver; “ he took more notice, and spoke to me; 
but he’s never known Tom yet, — looks at the poor lad as 


THE DOWNFALL 


223 


if he was a stranger, though he said something once about 
Tom and the pony. The doctor says his memory’s gone a 
long way back, and he doesn’t know Tom because he’s think¬ 
ing of him when he was little. Eh dear, eh dear! ” 

“ I doubt it’s the water got on his brain,” said aunt Pullet, 
turning round from adjusting her cap in a melancholy way 
at the pier-glass. “ It’s much if he ever gets up again; and 
if he does, he’ll most like be childish, as Mr. Carr was, poor 
man! They fed him with a spoon as if he’d been a babby 
for three year. He’d quite lost the use of his limbs; but 
then he’d got a Bath chair, and somebody to draw him; and 
that’s what you won’t have, I doubt, Bessy.” 

“ Sister Pullet,” said Mrs. Glegg, severely, “ if I under¬ 
stand right, we’ve come together this morning to advise and 
consult about what’s to be done in this disgrace as has fallen 
upon the family, and not to talk o’ people as don’t belong 
to us. Mr. Carr was none of our blood, nor noways con¬ 
nected with us, as I’ve ever heared.” 

“ Sister Glegg,” said Mrs. Pullet, in a pleading tone, draw¬ 
ing on her gloves again, and stroking the fingers in an agi¬ 
tated manner, “ if you’ve got anything disrespectful to say 
o’ Mr. Carr, I do beg of you as you won’t say it to me. I 
know what he was,” she added, with a sigh; “ his breath was 
short to that degree as you could hear him two rooms off.” 

“Sophy! ” said Mrs. Glegg, with indignant disgust, “you 
do talk o’ people’s complaints till it’s quite undecent. But 
I say again, as I said before, I didn’t come away from home 
to talk about acquaintances, whether they’d short breath or 
long. If we aren’t come together for one to hear what the 
other ’ull do to save a sister and her children from the parish, 
I shall go back. One can’t act without the other, I suppose; 
it isn’t to be expected as I should do everything.” 

“Well, Jane,” said Mrs. Pullet, “I don’t see as you’ve 
been so very forrard at doing. So far as I know, this is the 
first time as here you’ve been, since it’s been known as the 
bailiff’s in the house; and I was here yesterday, and looked 
at all Bessy’s linen and things, and I told her I’d buy in the 
spotted tablecloths. I couldn’t speak fairer; for as for the 


224 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


teapot as she doesn’t want to go out o’ the family, it stands 
to sense I can’t do with two silver teapots, not if it hadn’t 
a straight spout, but the spotted damask I was allays 
fond on.” 

“ I wish it could be managed so as my teapot and chany 
and the best castors needn’t be put up for sale,” said poor 
Mrs. Tulliver, beseechingly, “ and the sugar-tongs the first' 
things ever I bought.” 

“ But that can’t be helped, you know,” said Mr. Glegg. 
“ If one o’ the family chooses to buy ’em in, they can, but 
one thing must be bid for as well as another.” 

“ And it isn’t to be looked for,” said uncle Pullet, with un¬ 
wonted independence of idea, “ as your own family should 
pay more for things nor they’ll fetch. They may go for an 
old song by auction.” 

“ Oh dear, oh dear,” said Mrs. Tulliver, “ to think o’ my 
chany being sold i’ that way, and I bought it when I was 
married, just as you did yours, Jane and Sophy; and I know 
you didn’t like mine, because o’ the sprig, but I was fond of 
it; and there’s never been a bit broke, for I’ve washed it 
myself; and there’s the tulips on the cups, and the roses, as 
anybody might go and look at ’em for pleasure. You 
wouldn’t like your chany to go for an old song and be broke 
to pieces, though yours has got no color in it, Jane, — it’s all 
white and fluted, and didn’t cost so much as mine. And 
there’s the castors, sister Deane, I can’t think but you’d 
like to have the castors, for I’ve heard you say they’re 
pretty.” 

“ Well, I’ve no objection to buy some of the best things,” 
said Mrs. Deane, rather loftily; “we can do with extra 
things in our house.” 

“ Best things! ” exclaimed Mrs. Glegg, with severity, which 
had gathered intensity from her long silence. “ It drives 
me past patience to hear you all talking o’ best things, and 
buying in this, that, and the other, such as silver and chany. 
You must bring your mind to your circumstances, Bessy, 
and not be thinking o’ silver and chany; but whether you 
shall get so much as a flock-bed to lie on, and a blanket to 


THE DOWNFALL 


225 


cover you, and a stool to sit on. You must remember, if you 
get ’em, it’ll be because your friends have bought ’em for 
you, for you’re dependent upon them for everything; for 
your husband lies there helpless, and hasn’t got a penny i’ 
the world to call his own. And it’s for your own good I say 
this, for it’s right you should feel what your state is, and 
what disgrace your husband’s brought on your own family, 
as you’ve got to look to for everything, and be humble in 
your mind.” 

Mrs. Glegg paused, for speaking with much energy for the 
good of others is naturally exhausting. Mrs. Tulliver, al¬ 
ways borne down by the family predominance of sister Jane, 
who had made her wear the yoke of a younger sister in very 
tender years, said pleadingly. 

“ I’m sure, sister, I’ve never asked anybody to do any¬ 
thing, only buy things as it ’ud be a pleasure to ’em to have, 
so as they mightn’t go and be spoiled i’ strange houses. I 
never asked anybody to buy the things in for me and my 
children; though there’s the linen I spun, and I thought 
when Tom was born, — I thought one o’ the first things 
when he was lying i’ the cradle, as all the things I’d bought 
wi’ my own money, and been so careful of, ’ud go to him. 
But I’ve said nothing as I wanted my sisters to pay their 
money for me. What my husband has done for his sister’s 
unknown, and we should ha’ been better off this day if it 
hadn’t been as he’s lent money and never asked for it again.” 

“ Come, come,” said Mr. Glegg, kindly, “ don’t let us make 
things too dark. What’s done can’t be undone. We shall 
make a shift among us to buy what’s sufficient for you; 
though, as Mrs. G. says, they must be useful, plain things. 
We mustn’t be thinking o’ what’s unnecessary. A table, 
and a chair or two, and kitchen things, and a good bed, and 
such-like. Why, I’ve seen the day when I shouldn’t ha’ 
known myself if I’d lain on sacking i’stead o’ the floor. We 
get a deal o’ useless things about us, only because we’ve got 
the money to spend.” 

“ Mr. Glegg,” said Mrs. G., “ if you’ll be kind enough to 
let me speak, i’stead o’ taking the words out o’ my mouth, — 


226 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


I was going to say, Be§sy, as it’s fine talking for you to say 
as you’ve never asked us to buy anything for you; let me 
tell you, you ought to have asked us. Pray, how are you to 
be purvided for, if your own family don’t help you? You 
must go to the parish, if they didn’t. And you ought to 
know that, and keep it in mind, and ask us humble to do 
what we can for you, i’stead o’ saying, and making a boast, 
as you’ve never asked us for anything.” 

“ You talked o’ the Mosses, and what Mr. Tulliver’s done 
for ’em,” said uncle Pullet, who became unusually suggestive 
where advances of money were concerned. “ Haven’t they 
been anear you? They ought to do something as well as 
other folks; and if he’s lent ’em money, they ought to be 
made to pay it back.” 

“ Yes, to be sure,” said Mrs. Deane; “ I’ve been thinking 
so. How is it Mr. and Mrs. Moss aren’t here to meet us? 
It is but right they should do their share.” 

“ Oh, dear! ” said Mrs. Tulliver, “ I never sent ’em word 
about Mr. Tulliver, and they live so back’ard among the 
lanes at Basset, they niver hear anything only when Mr. 
Moss comes to market. But I niver gave ’em a thought. I 
wonder Maggie didn’t, though, for she was allays so fond of 
her aunt Moss.” 

“ Why don’t your children come in, Bessy?” said Mrs. 
Pullet, at the mention of Maggie. “.They should hear what 
their aunts and uncles have got to say; and Maggie,— 
when it’s me as have paid for half her schooling, she ought 
to think more of her aunt Pullet than of aunt Mosses. I 
may go off sudden when I get home to-day; there’s no 
telling.” 

“ If I’d had my way,” said Mrs. Glegg, “ the children ’ud 
ha’ been in the room from the first. It’s time they knew 
who they’ve to look to, and it’s right as somebody should 
talk to ’em, and let ’em know their condition i’ life, and what 
they’re come down to, and make ’em fed as they’ve got to 
suffer for their father’s faults.” 

“ Well, I’ll go and fetch ’em, sister,” said Mrs. Tulliver, 
resignedly. She was quite crushed now, and thought of the 


THE DOWNFALL 227 

treasures in the storeroom with no other feeling than blank 
despair. 

She went upstairs to fetch Tom and Maggie, who were 
both in their father’s room, and was on her way down again, 
when the sight of the storeroom door suggested a new 
thought to her. She went toward it, and left the children 
to go down by themsdves. 

The aunts and uncles appeared to have been in warm 
discussion when the brother and sister entered, — both with 
shrinking reluctance; for though Tom, with a practical 
sagacity which had been roused into activity by the strong 
stimulus of the new emotions he had undergone since yes¬ 
terday, had been turning over in his mind a plan which he 
meant to propose to one of his aunts or uncles, he felt by 
no means amicably toward them, and dreaded meeting them 
all at once as he. would have dreaded a large dose of - con¬ 
centrated physic, which was but just endurable in small 
draughts. As for Maggie, she was peculiarly depressed this 
morning; she had been called up, after brief rest, at three 
o’clock, and had that strange dreamy weariness which 
comes from watching in a sick-room through the chill hours 
of early twilight and breaking day, — in which the outside 
daylight life seems to have no importance, and to be a mere 
margin to the hours in the darkened chamber. Their en¬ 
trance interrupted the conversation. The shaking of hands 
was a melancholy and silent ceremony, till uncle Pullet ob¬ 
served, as Tom approached him: 

“ Well, young sir, we’ve been talking as we should want 
your pen and ink; you can write rarely now, after all your 
schooling, I should think.” 

“ Ay, ay,” said uncle Glegg, with admonition which he 
meant to be kind, “ we must look to see the good of all this 
schooling, as your father’s sunk so much money in, now, — 

‘When land is gone and money’s spent, 

Then learning is most excellent.’ 

Now’s the time, Tom, to let us see the good o’ your learn¬ 
ing. Let us see whether you can do better than I can, as 


228 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


have made my fortin without it. But I began wi’ doing 
with little, you see; I could live on a basin o’ porridge and 
a crust o’ bread-and-cheese. But I doubt high living and 
high learning ’ull make it harder for you, young man, nor it 
was for me.” 

“ But he must do it,” interposed aunt Glegg, energetically, 
“ whether it’s hard or no. He hasn’t got to consider what’s 
hard; he must consider as he isn’t to trusten to his friends 
to keep him in idleness and luxury; he’s got to bear the 
fruits of his father’s misconduct, and bring his mind to fare 
hard and to work hard. And he must be humble and grate¬ 
ful to his aunts and uncles for what they’re doing for his 
mother and father, as must be turned out into the streets 
and go to the workhouse if they didn’t help ’em. And his 
sister, too,” continued Mrs. Glegg, looking severely at 
Maggie, who had sat down on the sofa by her aunt Deane, 
drawn to her by the sense that she was Lucy’s mother, “ she 
must make up her mind to be humble and work; for there’ll 
be no servants to wait on her any more, — she must remem¬ 
ber that. She must do the work o’ the house, and she must 
respect and love her aunts as have done so much for her, 
and saved their money to leave to their nepheys and nieces.” 

Tom was still standing before the table in the centre of 
the group. There was a heightened color in his face, and he 
was very far from looking humbled^ but he was preparing 
to say, in a respectful tone, something he had previously 
meditated, when the door opened and his mother re-entered. 

Poor Mrs. Tulliver had in her hands a small tray, on 
which she had placed her silver teapot, a specimen teacup 
and saucer, the castors, and sugar-tongs. 

“ See here, sister,” she said, looking at Mrs. Deane, as she 
set the tray on the table, “ I thought, perhaps, if you looked 
at the teapot again, — it’s a good while since you saw it, — 
you might like the pattern better; it makes beautiful tea, 
and there’s a stand and everything; you might use it for 
every day, or else lay it by for Lucy when she goes to house¬ 
keeping. I should be so loath for ’em to buy it at the 
Golden Lion,” said the poor woman, her heart swelling, and 


THE DOWNFALL 


229 


the tears coming, — “ my teapot as I bought when I was 
married, and to think of its being scratched, and set before 
the travellers and folks, and my letters on it, — see here, 
E. D., — and everybody to see ’em.” 

“ Ah, dear, dear! ” said aunt Pullet, shaking her head 
with deep sadness, “ it’s very bad, — to think o’ the family 
initials going about everywhere, — it niver was so before; 
you’re a very unlucky sister, Bessy. But what’s the use o’ 
buying the teapot, when there’s the linen and spoons and 
everything to go, and some of ’em with your full name, — 
and when it’s got that straight spout, too.” 

“ As to disgrace o’ the family,” said Mrs. Glegg, “ that 
can’t be helped wi’ buying teapots. The disgrace is, for one 
o’ the family to ha’ married a man as has brought her to 
beggary. The disgrace is, as they’re to be sold up. We can’t 
hinder the country from knowing that.” 

Maggie had started up from the sofa at the allusion to her 
father, but Tom saw her action and flushed face in time to 
prevent her from speaking. “ Be quiet, Maggie,” he said 
authoritatively, pushing her aside. It was a remarkable 
manifestation of iself-command and practical judgment in a 
lad of fifteen, that when his aunt Glegg ceased, he began to 
speak in a quiet and respectful manner, though with a good 
deal of trembling in his voice; for his mother’s words had 
cut him to the quick. 

“ Then, aunt,” he said, looking straight at Mrs. Glegg, “ if 
you think it’s a disgrace to the family that we should be sold 
up, wouldn’t it be better to prevent it altogether ? And if 
you and my aunt Pullet,” he continued, looking at the lat¬ 
ter, “ think of leaving any money to me and Maggie, 
wouldn’t it be better to give it now, and pay the debt we’re 
going to be sold up for, and save my mother from parting 
with her furniture ? ” 

There was silence for a few moments, for every one, in¬ 
cluding Maggie, was astonished at Tom’s sudden manliness 
of tone. Uncle Glegg was the first to speak. 

“ Ay, ay, young man, come now! You show some notion 
o’ things. But there’s the interest, you must remember; 


230 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


your aunts get five per cent on their money, and they’d lose 
that if they advanced it; you haven’t thought o’ that.” 

“ I could work and pay that every year,” said Tom, 
promptly. “ I’d do anything to save my mother from part¬ 
ing with her things.” 

“ Well done! ” said uncle Glegg, admiringly. He had 
been drawing Tom out, rather than reflecting on the prac¬ 
ticability of his proposal. But he had produced the unfor¬ 
tunate result of irritating his wife. 

“Yes, Mr. Glegg! ” said that lady, with angry sarcasm. 
“ It’s pleasant work for you to be giving my money away, as 
you’ve pretended to leave at my own disposal. And my 
money, as was my own father’s gift, and not yours, Mr. 
Glegg; and I’ve saved it, and added to it myself, and had 
more to put out almost every year, and it’s to go and be 
sunk in other folks’s furniture, and encourage ’em in luxury 
and extravagance as they’ve no means of supporting; and 
I’m to alter my will, or have a codicil made, and leave 
two or three hundred less behind me when I die, — me as 
have allays done right and been careful, and the eldest 
o’ the family; and my money’s to go and be squandered 
on them as have had the same chance as me, only 
they’ve been wicked and wasteful. Sister Pullet, you may 
do as you like, and you may let your husband rob you 
back again o’ the money he’s given you, but that isn’t my 
sperrit.” 

“ La, Jane, how fiery you are! ” said Mrs. Pullet. “ I’m 
sure you’ll have the blood in your head, and have to be 
cupped. I’m sorry for Bessy and her children, — I’m sure 
I think of ’em o’ nights dreadful, for I sleep very bad wi’ 
this new medicine, — but it’s no use for me to think o’ doing 
anything, if you won’t meet me half-way.” 

“ Why, there’s this to be considered,” said Mr. Glegg. 
“ It’s no use to pay off this debt and save the furniture, 
when there’s all the law debts behind, as ’ud take every 
shilling, and more than could be made out o’ land and stock, 
for I’ve made that out from Lawyer Gore. We’d need save 
our money to keep the poor man with, instead o’ spending 


THE DOWNFALL 231 

it on furniture as he can neither eat nor drink. You will be 
so hasty, Jane, as if I didn’t know what was reasonable.” 

“ Then speak accordingly, Mr. Glegg! ” said his wife, with 
slow, loud emphasis, bending her head toward him signifi¬ 
cantly. 

Tom’s countenance had fallen during this conversation, 
and his lip quivered; but he was determined not to give way. 
He would behave like a man. Maggie, on the contrary, after 
her momentary delight in Tom’s speech, had relapsed into 
her state of trembling indignation. Her mother had been 
standing close by Tom’s side, and had been clinging to his 
arm ever since he had last spoken; Maggie suddenly started 
up and stood in front of them, her eyes flashing like the 
eyes of a young lioness. 

“ Why do you come, then,” she burst out, “ talking and 
interfering with us and scolding us, if you don’t mean to do 
anything to help my poor mother, — your own sister, — if 
you’ve no feeling for her when she’s in trouble, and won’t 
part with anything, though you would never miss it, to save 
her from pain? Keep away from us then, and don’t come 
to find fault v with my father, — he was better than any of 
you; he was kind, — he would have helped you, if you had 
been in trouble. Tom and I don’t ever want to have any of 
your money, if you won’t help my mother. We’d rather 
not have it! We’ll do without you.” 

Maggie, having hurled her defiance at aunts and uncles in 
this way, stood still, with her large dark eyes glaring at 
them, as if she were ready to await all consequences. 

Mrs. Tulliver was frightened; there was something por¬ 
tentous in this mad outbreak; she did not see how life could 
go on after it. Tom was vexed; it was no use to talk so. 
The aunts were silent with surprise for some moments. At 
length, in a case of aberration such as this, comment pre¬ 
sented itself as more expedient than any answer. 

“ You haven’t seen the end o’ your trouble wi’ that child, 
Bessy,” said Mrs. Pullet; “ she’s beyond everything for bold¬ 
ness and unthankfulness. It’s dreadful. I might ha’ let 
alone paying for her schooling, for she’s worse nor ever.” 


232 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


“ It’s no more than what IVe allays said,” followed Mrs. 
Glegg. “ Other folks may be surprised, but I’m not. IVe 
said over and over again, — years ago IVe said, — ‘ Mark 
my words; that child ’ull come to no good; there isn’t a bit 
of our family in her.’ And as for her having so much school¬ 
ing, I never thought well o’ that. I’d my reasons when I 
said 1 wouldn’t pay anything toward it.” 

“ Come, come,” said Mr. Glegg, “ let’s waste no more time 
in talking, — let’s go 'to business. Tom, now, get the pen 
and ink-” 

While Mr. Glegg was speaking, a tall dark figure was seen 
hurrying past the window. 

“ Why, there’s Mrs. Moss,” said Mrs. Tulliver. “ The bad 
news must ha’ reached her, then ”; and she went out to open 
the door, Maggie eagerly following her. 

“ That’s fortunate,” said Mrs. Glegg. “ She can agree to 
the list o’ things to be bought in. It’s but right she should 
do her share when it’s her own brother.” 

Mrs. Moss was in too much agitation to resist Mrs. Tulli- 
ver’s movement, as she drew her into the parlor automati¬ 
cally, without reflecting that it was hardly kind to take her 
among so many persons in the first painful moment of ar¬ 
rival. The tall, worn, dark-haired woman was a strong con¬ 
trast to the Dodson sisters as she entered in her shabby 
dress, with her shawl and bonnet looking as if they had been 
hastily huddled on, and with that entire absence of self- 
consciousness which belongs to keenly felt trouble. Maggie 
was clinging to her arm; and Mrs. Moss seemed to notice 
no one else except Tom, whom she went straight up to and 
took by the hand. 

“ Oh, my dear children,” she burst out, “ you’ve no call 
to think well o’ me; I’m a poor aunt to you, for I’m one 
o’ them as take all and give nothing. How’s my poor 
brother ? ” 

“ Mr. Turnbull thinks he’ll get better,” said Maggie. 
“ Sit down, aunt Gritty. Don’t fret.” 

“ Oh, my sweet child, I feel torn i’ two,” said Mrs. Moss, 
allowing Maggie to lead her to the sofa, but still not seem- 



THE DOWNFALL 


233 


ing to notice the presence of the rest. “ We’ve three hun ¬ 
dred pounds o’ my brother’s money, and now he wants it, 
and you all want it, poor things! — and yet we must be sold 
up to pay it, and there’s my poor children, — eight of ’em, 
and the little un of all can’t speak plain. And I feel as 
if I was a robber. But I’m sure I’d no thought as my 
brother-” 

The poor woman was interrupted by a rising sob. 

“ Three hundred pounds! oh dear, dear,” said Mrs. Tulli- 
ver, who, when she had said that her husband had done 
“ unknown ” things for his sister, had not had any particular 
sum in her mind, and felt a wife’s irritation at having been 
kept in the dark. 

“ What madness, to be sure! ” said Mrs. Glegg. “ A man 
with a family! He’d no right to lend his money i’ that way; 
and without security, I’ll be bound, if the truth was known.” 

Mrs. Glegg’s voice had arrested Mrs. Moss’s attention, 
and looking up, she said: 

“ Yes, there was security; my husband gave a note for it. 
We’re not that sort o’ people, neither of us, as ’ud rob my 
brother’s children; and we looked to paying back the 
money, when the times got a bit better.” 

“ Well, but now,” said Mr. Glegg, gently, “ hasn’t your 
husband no way o’ raising this money? Because it ’ud be 
a little fortin, like, for these folks, if we can do without Tul- 
liver’s being made a bankrupt. Your husband’s got stock; 
it is but right he should raise the money, as it seems to me, 
— not but what I’m sorry for you, Mrs. Moss.” 

“ Oh, sir, you don’t know what bad luck my husband’s 
had with his stock. The farm’s suffering so as never was for 
want o’ stock; and we’ve sold all the wheat, and we’re be¬ 
hind with our rent, — not but what we’d like to do what’s 
right, and I’d sit up and work half the night, if it ’ud be any 
good; but there’s them poor children, — four of ’em such 
little uns-” 

“ Don’t cry so, aunt; don’t fret,” whispered Maggie, who 
had kept hold of Mrs. Moss’s hand. 

“ Did Mr. Tulliver let you have the money all at once? ” 


234 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


said Mrs. Tulliver, still lost in the conception of things which 
had been “ going on ” without her knowledge. 

“No; at twice,” said Mrs. Moss, rubbing her eyes and 
making an effort to restrain her tears. “ The last was after 
my bad illness four years ago, as everything went wrong, 
and there was a new note made then. What with illness and 
bad luck, IVe been nothing but cumber all my life.” 

“ Yes, Mrs. Moss,” said Mrs. Glegg, with decision, “ yours 
is a very unlucky family; the more’s the pity for my sister.” 

“ I set off in the cart as soon as ever I heard o’ what had 
happened,” said Mrs. Moss, looking at Mrs. Tulliver. “ I 
should never ha’ stayed away all this while, if you’d thought 
well to let me know. And it isn’t as I’m thinking all about 
ourselves, and nothing about my brother, only the money 
was so on my mind, I couldn’t help speaking about it. And 
my husband and me desire to do the right thing, sir,” she 
added, looking at Mr. Glegg, “ and we’ll make shift and pay 
the money, come what will, if that’s all my brother’s got to 
trust to. We’ve been used to trouble, and don’t look for 
much else. It’s only the thought o’ my poor children pulls 
me i’ two.” 

“ Why, there’s this to be thought on, Mrs. Moss,” said 
Mr. Glegg, “ and it’s right to warn you, — if Tulliver’s 
made a bankrupt, and he’s got a note-of-hand of your hus¬ 
band’s for three hundred pounds, you’ll be obliged to pay it; 
th’ assignees ’ull come on you for it.” 

“ Oh dear, oh dear! ” said Mrs. Tulliver, thinking of the 
bankruptcy, and hot of Mrs. Moss’s concern in it. Poor 
Mrs. Moss herself listened in trembling submission, while 
Maggie looked with bewildered distress at Tom to see if he 
showed any signs of understanding this trouble, and caring 
about poor aunt Moss. Tom was only looking thoughtful, 
with his eyes on the tablecloth. 

“ And if he isn’t made bankrupt,” continued Mr. Glegg, 
“ as I said be.fore, three hundred pounds ’ud be a little fortin 
for him, poor man. We don’t know but what he may be 
partly helpless, if he ever gets up again. I’m very sorry 
if it goes hard with you, Mrs. Moss, but my opinion is, look- 


THE DOWNFALL 


235 


ing at it one way, it’ll be right for you to raise the money; 
and looking at it th’ other way, you’ll be obliged to pay it. 
You won’t think ill o’ me for speaking the truth.” 

“ Uncle,” said Tom, looking up suddenly from his medita¬ 
tive view of the tablecloth, “ I don’t think it would be right 
for my aunt Moss to pay the money if it would be against 
my father’s will for her to pay it; would it? ” 

Mr. Glegg looked surprised for a moment or two before 
he said: “Why, no, perhaps not, Tom; but then he’d ha’ 
destroyed the note, you know. We must look for the note. 
What makes you think it ’ud be against his will ? ” 

“ Why,” said Tom, coloring, but trying to speak firmly, in 
spite of a boyish tremor, “ I remember quite well, before I 
went to school to Mr. Stelling, my father said to me one 
night, when we were sitting by the fire together, and no one 

else was in the room-” 

Tom hesitated a little, and then went on. 

“ He said something to me about Maggie, and then he 
said: ‘ I’ve always been good to my sister, though she mar¬ 
ried against my will, and I’ve lent Moss money; but I shall 
never think of distressing him to pay it; I’d rather lose it. 
My children must not mind being the poorer for that.’ And 
now my father’s ill, and not able to speak for himself, I 
shouldn’t like anything to be done contrary to what he said 
to me.” 

“ Well, but then, my boy,” said uncle Glegg, whose good 
feeling led him to enter into Tom’s wish, but who could not 
at once shake off his habitual abhorrence of such reckless¬ 
ness as destroying securities, or alienating anything impor¬ 
tant enough to make an appreciable difference in a man’s 
property, “ we should have to make away wi’ the note, you 
know, if we’re to guard against what may happen, sup¬ 
posing your father’s made bankrupt-” 

“ Mr. Glegg,” interrupted his wife, severely, “ mind what 
you’re saying. You’re putting yourself very forrard in 
other folks’s business. If you speak rash, don’t say it was my 
fault.” 

“ That’s such a thing as I never heard of before,” said 


236 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


uncle Pullet, who had been making haste with his lozenge 
in order to express his amazement, — “ making away with 
a note! I should think anybody could set the constable 
on you for it.” 

“ Well, but,” said Mrs. Tulliver, “ if the note’s worth all 
that money, why can’t we pay it away, and save my things 
from going away? We’ve no call to meddle with your 
uncle and aunt Moss, Tom, if you think your father ’ud be 
angry when he gets well.” 

Mrs. Tulliver had not studied the question of exchange, 
and was straining her mind after original ideas on the 
subject. 

“ Pooh, pooh, pooh! you women don’t understand these 
things,” said uncle Glegg. “ There’s no way o’ making it 
safe for Mr. and Mrs. Moss but destroying the note.” 

“ Then I hope you’ll help me to do it, uncle,” said Tom, 
earnestly. “ If my father shouldn’t get well, I should be very 
unhappy to think anything had been done against his will 
that I could hinder. And I’m sure he meant me to re¬ 
member what he said that evening. I ought to obey my 
father’s wish about his property.” 

Even Mrs. Glegg could not withhold her approval from 
Tom’s words; she felt that the Dodson blood was certainly 
speaking in him, though, if his father had been a Dodson, 
there would never have been this wicked alienation of money. 
Maggie would hardly have restrained herself from leaping 
on Tom’s neck, if her aunt Moss had not prevented her by 
herself rising and taking Tom’s hand, while she said, with 
rather a choked voice: 

“ You’ll never be the poorer for this, my dear boy, if 
there’s a God above; and if the money’s wanted for your 
father, Moss and me ’ull pay it, the same as if there was 
ever such security. We’ll do as we’d be done by; for if 
my children have got no other luck, they’ve got an honest 
father and mother.” 

“ Well,” said Mr. Glegg, who had been meditating after 
Tom’s words, “ we shouldn’t be doing any wrong by the 
creditors, supposing your father was bankrupt. I’ve been 


THE DOWNFALL 


237 


thinking o’ that, for I’ve been a creditor myself, and seen 
no end o’ cheating. If he meant to give your aunt the 
money before ever he got into this sad work o’ lawing, it’s 
the same as if he’d made away with the note himself; for 
he’d made up his mind to be that much poorer. But there’s 
a deal o’ things to be considered, young man,” Mr. Glegg 
added, looking admonishingly at Tom, “ when you come to 
money business, and you may be taking one man’s dinner 
away to make another man’s breakfast. You don’t under¬ 
stand that, I doubt? ” 

“ Yes, I do,” said Tom, decidedly. “ I know if I owe 
money to one man, I’ve no right to give it to another. But 
if my father had made up his mind to give my aunt the 
money before he was in debt, he had a right to do it.” 

“Well done, young man! I didn’t think you’d been so 
sharp,” said uncle Glegg, with much candor. “ But per¬ 
haps your father did make away with the note. Let us 
go and see if we can find it in the chest.” 

“ It’s in my father’s room. Let us go too, aunt Gritty,” 
whispered Maggie. 


CHAPTER IY 

A VANISHING GLEAM 

M R. TULLIVER, even between the fits of spasmodic 
rigidity which had recurred at intervals ever since he 
had been found fallen from his horse, was usually in so 
apathetic a condition that the exits and entrances into his 
room were not felt to be of great importance. He had lain 
so still, with his eyes closed, all this morning, that Maggie 
told her aunt Moss she must not expect her father to take 
any notice of them. 

They entered very quietly, and Mrs. Moss took her seat 
near the head of the bed, while Maggie sat in her old place 
on the bed, and put her hand on her father’s without caus¬ 
ing any change in his face. 


238 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


Mr. Glegg and Tom had also entered, treading softly, and 
were busy selecting the key of the old oak chest from 
the bunch which Tom had brought from his father’s 
bureau. They succeeded in opening the chest, — which 
stood opposite the foot of Mr. Tulliver’s bed, — and 
propping the lid with the iron holder, without much 
noise. 

“ There’s a tin box,” whispered Mr. Glegg; “ he’d most 
like put a small thing like a note in there. Lift it out, 
Tom; but I’ll just lift up these deeds, — they’re the deeds 
o’ the house and mill, I suppose, — and see what there is 
under ’em.” 

Mr. Glegg had lifted out the parchments, and had for¬ 
tunately drawn back a little, when the iron holder gave 
way, and the heavy lid fell with a loud bang that resounded 
over the house. 

Perhaps there was something in that sound more than 
the mere fact of the strong vibration that produced the 
instantaneous effect on the frame of the prostrate man, and 
for the time completely shook off the obstruction of paraly¬ 
sis. The chest had belonged to his father and his father’s 
father, and it had always been rather a solemn business to 
visit it. All long-known objects, even a mere window fasten¬ 
ing or a particular door-latch, have sounds which are a sort 
of recognized voice to us, — a voice that will thrill and 
awaken, when it has been used to touch deep-lying fibres. 
In the same moment, when all the eyes in the room were 
turned upon him, he started up and looked at the chest, 
the parchments in Mr. Glegg’s hand, and Tom holding the 
tin box, with a glance of perfect consciousness and recogni¬ 
tion. 

“ What are you going to do with those deeds? ” he said, 
in his ordinary tone of sharp questioning whenever he was 
irritated. “ Come here, Tom. What do you do, going to 
my chest? ” 

Tom obeyed, with some trembling; it was the first time 
•his father had recognized him. But instead of saying any¬ 
thing more to him, his father continued to look with a 


THE DOWNFALL 239 

growing distinctness of suspicion at Mr. Glegg and the 
deeds.- 

“ What’s been happening, then? ” he said sharply. “ What 
are you meddling with my deeds for? Is Wakem laying hold 
of everything? Why don’t you tell me what you’ve been 
a-doing? ” he added impatiently, as Mr. Glegg advanced to 
the foot of the bed before speaking. 

“ No, no, friend Tulliver,” said Mr. Glegg, in a soothing 
tone. “ Nobody’s getting hold of anything as yet. We only 
came to look and see what was in the chest. You’ve been 
ill, you know, and we’ve had to look after things a bit. 
But let’s hope you’ll soon be well enough to attend to every¬ 
thing yourself.” 

Mr. Tulliver looked round him meditatively, at Tom, at 
Mr. Glegg, and at Maggie; then suddenly appearing aware 
that some one was seated by his side at the head of the 
bed he turned sharply round and saw his sister. 

“ Eh, Gritty! ” he said, in the half-sad, affectionate tone 
in which he had been wont to speak to her. “ What! you’re 
there, are you? How could you manage to leave the 
children? ” 

“ Oh, brother! ” said good Mrs. Moss, too impulsive to be 
prudent, “I’m thankful I’m come now to see you yourself 
again; I thought you’d never know us any more.” 

“What! have I had a stroke?” said Mr. Tulliver, anx¬ 
iously, looking at Mr. Glegg. 

“ A fall from your horse, — shook you a bit, — that’s all, 
I think,” said Mr. Glegg. “ But you’ll soon get over it, let’s 
hope.” 

Mr. Tulliver fixed his eyes on the bed-clothes, and re¬ 
mained silent for two or three minutes. A new shadow 
came over his face. He looked up at Maggie first, and said 
in a lower tone, “ You got the letter, then, my wench? ” 

“Yes, father,” she said, kissing him with a full heart. 
She felt as if her father were come back to her from the 
dead, and her yearning to show him how she had always 
loved him could be fulfilled. 

“ Where’s your mother? ” he said, so preoccupied that he 


240 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


received the kiss as passively as some quiet animal might 
have received it. 

“She’s downstairs with my aunts, father. Shall I fetch 
her? ” 

“Ay, ay; poor Bessy! ” and his eyes turned toward Tom 
as Maggie left the room. 

“ You’ll have to take care of ’em both if I die, you know, 
Tom. You’ll be badly off, I doubt. But you must see and 
pay everybody. And mind, — there’s fifty pound o’ Luke’s 
as I put into the business, — he gave it me a bit at a time, 
and he’s got nothing to show for it. You must pay him first 
thing.” 

Uncle Glegg involuntarily shook his head, and looked 
more concerned than ever, but Tom said firmly: 

“ Yes, father. And haven’t you a note from my uncle 
Moss for three hundred pounds? We came to look for 
that. What do you wish to be done about it, father? ” 

“Ah! I’m glad you thought o’ that, my lad,” said Mr. 
Tulliver. “ I allays meant to be easy about that money, 
because o’ your aunt. You mustn’t mind losing the money, 
if they can’t pay it, — and it’s like enough they can’t. 
The note’s in that box, mind! I allays meant to be good 
to you, Gritty,” said Mr. Tulliver, turning to his sister; 
“ but you know you aggravated me when you would have 
Moss.” 

At this moment Maggie re-entered with her mother, who 
came in much agitated by the news that her husband was 
quite himself again. 

“ Well, Bessy,” he said, as she kissed him, “ you must for¬ 
give me if you’re worse off than you ever expected to be. 
But it’s the fault o’ the law, — it’s none o’ mine,” he added 
angrily. “It’s the fault o’ raskills. Tom, you mind this: 
if ever you’ve got the chance, you make Wakem smart. If 
you don’t, you’re a good-for-nothing son. You might horse¬ 
whip him, but he’d set the law on you, — the law’s made to 
take care o’ raskills.” 

Mr. Tulliver was getting excited, and an alarming flush 
was on his face. Mr. Glegg wanted to say something sooth- 


THE DOWNFALL 


241 


ing, but he was prevented by Mr. Tulliver’s speaking again 
to his wife. “ They’ll make a shift to pay everything, Bessy,” 
he said, “ and yet leave you your furniture; and your 
sisters’ll do something for you — and Tom’ll grow up — 
though what he’s to be I don’t know — I’ve done what I 
could — I’ve given him a eddication — and there’s the little 
wench, she’ll get married — but it’s a poor tale-” 

The sanative effect of the strong vibration was exhausted, 
and with the last words the poor man fell again, rigid and 
insensible. Though this was only a recurrence of what 
had happened before, it struck all present as if it had been 
death, not only from its contrast with the completeness of 
the revival, but because his words had all had reference to 
the possibility that his death was near. But with poor 
Tulliver death was not to be a leap; it was to be a long 
descent under thickening shadows. 

Mr. Turnbull was sent for; but when he heard what had 
passed, he said this complete restoration, though only tem¬ 
porary, was a hopeful sign, proving that there was no 
permanent lesion to prevent ultimate recovery. 

Among the threads of the past which the stricken man 
had gathered up, he had omitted the bill of sale; the flash of 
memory had only lit up prominent ideas, and he sank into 
forgetfulness again with half his humiliation unlearned. 

But Tom was clear upon two points, — that his uncle 
Moss’s note must be destroyed; and that Luke’s money 
must be paid, if in no other way, out of his own and 
Maggie’s money now in the savings bank. There were sub¬ 
jects, you perceive, on which Tom was much quicker than 
on the niceties of classical construction, or the relations of 
a mathematical demonstration. 



CHAPTER V 


TOM APPLIES HIS KNIFE TO THE OYSTER 
HE next day, at ten o’clock, Tom was on his way to 



X St. Ogg’s, to see his uncle Deane who was to come 
home last night, his aunt had said; and Tom had made up 
his mind that his uncle Deane was the right person to ask 
for advice about getting some employment. He was in a 
great way of business; he had not the narrow notions of 
uncle Glegg; and he had risen in the world on a scale of 
advancement which accorded with Tom’s ambition. 

It was a dark, chill, misty morning, likely to end in rain, 
— one of those mornings when even happy people take 
refuge in their hopes. And Tom was very unhappy; he felt 
the humiliation as well as the prospective hardships of his 
lot with all the keenness of a proud nature; and with all his 
resolute dutifulness toward his father there mingled an 
irrepressible indignation against him which gave misfortune 
the less endurable aspect of a wrong. Since these were the 
consequences of going to law, his father was really blamable, 
as his aunts and uncles had always said he was; and it was 
a significant indication of Tom’s character, that though he 


242 






THE DOWNFALL 


243 


thought his aunts ought to do something more for his mother, 
he felt nothing like Maggie’s violent resentment against 
them for showing no eager tenderness and generosity. There 
were no impulses in Tom that led him to expect what did 
not present itself to him as a right to be demanded. Why 
should people give away their money plentifully to those 
who had not taken care of their own money? Tom saw 
some justice in severity; and all the more, because he had 
confidence in himself that he should never deserve that just 
severity. It was very hard upon him that he should be 
put at this disadvantage in life by his father’s want of 
prudence; but he was not going to complain and to find 
fault with people because they, did not make everything easy 
for him. He would ask no one to help him, more than to 
give him work and pay him for it. Poor Tom was not with¬ 
out his hopes to take refuge in under the chill damp im¬ 
prisonment of the December fog, which seemed only like a 
part of his home troubles. At sixteen, the mind that has 
the strongest affinity for fact cannot escape illusion and self- 
flattery; and Tom, in sketching his future, had no other 
guide in arranging his facts than the suggestions of his own 
brave self-reliance. -Both Mr. Glegg and Mr. Deane, he 
knew, had been very poor once; he did not want to save 
money slowly and retire on a moderate fortune like his 
uncle Glegg, but he would be like his uncle Deane, — get a 
situation in some great house of business and rise fast. He 
had scarcely seen anything of his uncle Deane for the last 
three years, — the two families had been getting wider 
apart; but for this very reason Tom was the more hopeful 
about applying to him. His uncle Glegg, he felt sure, would 
never encourage any spirited project, but he had a vague 
imposing idea of the resources at his uncle Deane’s com¬ 
mand. 

He had heard his father say, long ago, how Deane had 
made himself so valuable to Guest & Co. that they were 
glad enough to offer him a share in the business; that was 
what Tom resolved he would do. It was intolerable to think 
of being poor and looked down upon all one’s life. He 


244 


MILL ON THE ELOSS 


would provide for his mother and sister, and make every 
one say that he was a man of high character. He leaped 
over the years in this way, and, in the haste of strong pur¬ 
pose and strong desire, did not see how they would be made 
up of slow days, hours, and minutes. 

By the time he had crossed the stone bridge over the 
Floss and was entering St. Ogg’s, he was thinking that he 
would buy his father’s mill and land again when he was 
rich enough, and improve the house and live there; he 
should prefer it to any smarter, newer place, and he could 
keep as many horses and dogs as he liked. 

Walking along the street with a firm, rapid step, at this 
point in his reverie he was startled by some one who had 
crossed without his notice, and who said to him in a rough, 
familiar voice: 

“Why, Master Tom, how’s your father this morning?” 
It was a publican of St. Ogg’s, one of his father’s customers. 

Tom disliked being spoken to just then; but he said 
civilly, “ He’s still very ill, thank you.” 

“ Ay, it’s been a sore chance for you, young man, 
hasn’t it, — this lawsuit turning out against him?” said 
the publican, with a confused, beery* idea of being good- 
natured. 

Tom reddened and passed on; he would have felt it like 
the handling of a bruise, even if there had been the most 
polite and delicate reference to his position. 

“ That’s Tulliver’s son,” said the publican to a grocer 
standing on the adjacent door-step. 

“Ah! ” said the grocer, “I thought I knew his features. 
He takes after his mother’s family; she was a Dodson. He’s 
a fine, straight youth; what’s he been brought up to ? ” 

“ Oh! to turn up his nose at his father’s customers, and 
be a fine gentleman, — not much else, I think.” 

Tom, roused from his dream of the future to a thorough 
consciousness of the present, made all the greater haste 
to reach the warehouse offices of Guest & Co., where he ex¬ 
pected to find his uncle Deane. But this was Mr. Deane’s 
morning at the bank, a clerk told him, with some contempt 


THE DOWNFALL 245 

for his ignorance; Mr. Deane was not to be found in River 
Street on a Thursday morning. 

At the bank Tom was admitted into the private room 
where his uncle was, immediately after sending in his name. 
Mr. Deane was auditing accounts; but he looked up as 
Tom entered, and putting out his hand, said, “ Well, Tom, 
nothing fresh the matter at home, I hope? How’s your 
father ? ” 

“ Much the same, thank you, uncle,” said Tom, feeling 
nervous. “ But I want to speak to you, please, when you’re 
at liberty.” 

“ Sit down, sit down,” said Mr. Deane, relapsing into his 
accounts, in which he and the managing-clerk remained so 
absorbed for the next half-hour that Tom began to wonder 
whether he should have to sit in this way till the bank 
closed, — there seemed so little tendency toward a conclusion 
in the quiet, monotonous procedure of these sleek, prosper¬ 
ous men of business. Would his uncle give him a place in 
the bank? It would be very dull, prosy work, he thought, 
writing there forever to the loud ticking of a timepiece. He 
preferred some other way of getting rich. But at last there 
was a change; his uncle took a pen and wrote something 
with a flourish at the end. 

“ You’ll just step up to Torry’s now, Mr. Spence, will 
you?” said Mr. Deane, and the clock suddenly became 
less loud and deliberate in Tom’s ears. 

“ Well, Tom,” said Mr. Deane, when they were alone, 
turning his substantial person a little in his chair, and 
taking out his snuff-box, “ what’s the business, my boy; 
what’s the business? ” Mr. Deane, who had heard from his 
wife what had passed the day before, thought Tom was 
come to appeal to him for some means of averting the sale. 

“ I hope you’ll excuse me for troubling you, uncle,” said 
Tom, coloring, but speaking in a tone which, though tremu¬ 
lous, had a certain proud independence in it; “ but I thought 
you were the best person to advise me what to do.” 

“Ah! ” said Mr. Deane, reserving his pinch of snuff, and 
looking at Tom with new attention, “ let us hear.” 


246 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


“ I want to get a situation, uncle, so that I may earn 
some money,” said Tom, who never fell into circumlocution. 

“ A situation? ” said Mr. Deane, and then took his pinch 
of snuff with elaborate justice to each nostril. Tom thought 
snuff-taking a most provoking habit. 

“ Why, let me see, how old are you? ” said Mr. Deane, as 
he threw himself backward again. 

“Sixteen; I mean, I am going in seventeen,” said Tom, 
hoping his uncle noticed how much beard he had. 

“Let me see; your father had some notion of making 
you an engineer, I think? ” 

“But I don’t think I could get any money at that for 
a long while, could I ? ” 

“ That’s true; but people don’t get much money at 
anything, my boy, when they’re only sixteen. You’ve 
had a good deal of schooling, however; I suppose you’re 
pretty well up in accounts, eh? You understand book¬ 
keeping ? ” 

“ No,” said Tom, rather falteringly. “ I was in Practice. 
But Mr. Stelling says I write a good hand, uncle. That’s 
my writing,” added Tom, laying on the table a copy of the 
list he had made yesterday. 

“Ah! that’s good, that’s good. But, you see, the best 
hand in the world’ll not get you a better place than a 
copying-clerk’s, if you know nothing of book-keeping,— 
nothing of accounts. And a copying-clerk’s a cheap article. 
But what have you been learning at school, then? ” 

Mr. Deane had not occupied himself with methods of 
education, and had no precise conception of what went for¬ 
ward in expensive schools. 

“We learned Latin,” said Tom, pausing a little between 
each item, as if he were turning over the books in his school- 
desk to assist his memory, — “a good deal of Latin; and 
the last year I did Themes, one week in Latin and one in 
English; and Greek and Roman history; and Euclid; and 
I began Algebra, but I left it off again; and we h^id one 
day every week for Arithmetic. Then I used to have 
drawing-lessons; and there were several other books we 


THE DOWNFALL 247 

either read or learned out of, — English Poetry, and Horce 
Paulines, and Blair’s Rhetoric, the last half.” 

Mr. Deane tapped his snuff-box again and screwed up his 
mouth; he felt in the position of many estimable per¬ 
sons when they had read the New Tariff, and found how 
many commodities were imported of which they knew noth¬ 
ing; like a cautious man of business, he was not going to 
speak rashly of a raw material in which he had had no 
experience. But the presumption was, that if it had been 
good for anything, so successful a man as himself would 
hardly have been ignorant of it. About Latin he had an 
opinion, and thought that in case of another war, since 
people would no longer wear hair-powder, it would be well 
to put a tax upon Latin, as a luxury much run upon by the 
higher classes, and not telling at all on the ship-owning de¬ 
partment. But, for what he knew, the Horce Paulince might 
be something less neutral. On the whole, this list of ac¬ 
quirements gave him a sort of repulsion toward poor Tom. 

“ Well,” he said at last, in rather a cold, sardonic tone, 
“ you’ve had three years at these things, — you must be 
pretty strong on ’em. Hadn’t you better take up some 
line where they’ll come in handy? ” 

Tom colored, and burst out, with new energy: 

“ I’d rather not have any employment of that sort, uncle. 
I don’t like Latin and those things. I don’t know what I 
could do with them unless I went as usher in a school; and 
I don’t know them well enough for that; besides, I would 
as soon carry a pair of panniers. I don’t want to be that 
sort of person. I should like to enter into some business 
where I can get on, — a manly business, where I should 
have to look after things, and get credit for what I did. 
And I shall want to keep my mother and sister.’ 5 

“ Ah, young gentleman,” said Mr. Deane, with that tend¬ 
ency to repress youthful hopes which stout and successful 
men of fifty find one of their easiest duties, “ that’s sooner 
said than done, — sooner said than done.” 

“ But didn’t you get on in that way, uncle? ” said Tom, a 
little irritated that Mr. Deane did not enter more rapidly 


248 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


into his views. “ I mean, didn’t you rise from one place 
to another through your abilities and good conduct? ” 

“ Ay, ay, sir,” said Mr. Deane, spreading himself in his 
chair a little, and entering with great readiness into a 
retrospect of his own career. “ But I’ll tell you how I got 
on. It wasn’t by getting astride a stick and thinking it 
would turn into a horse if I sat on it long enough. I kept 
my eyes and ears open, sir, and I wasn’t too fond of my 
own back, and I made my master’s interest my own. Why, 
with only looking into what went on in the mill, I found out 
how there was a waste of five hundred a year that might 
be hindered. Why, sir, I hadn’t more schooling to begin 
with than a charity boy; but I saw pretty soon that I 
couldn’t get on far enough without mastering accounts, and 
I learned ’em between working hours, after I’d been un¬ 
lading. Look here.” Mr. Deane opened a book and pointed 
to the page. “ I write a good hand enough, and I’ll match 
anybody at all sorts of reckoning by the head; and I got 
it all by hard work, and paid for it out of my own earnings, 
— often out of my own dinner and supper. And I looked 
into the nature of all the things we had to do with in the 
business, and picked up knowledge as I went about my 
work, and turned it over in my head. Why, I’m no me¬ 
chanic,— I never pretended to be, — but I’ve thought 
of a thing or two that the mechanics never thought of, 
and it’s made a fine difference in our returns. And there 
isn’t an article shipped or unshipped at our wharf but I 
know the quality of it. If I got places, sir, it was because 
I made myself fit for ’em. If you want to slip into a 
round hole, you must make a ball of yourself; that’s where 
it is.” 

Mr. Deane tapped his box again. He had been led on by 
pure enthusiasm in his subject, and had really forgotten 
what bearing this retrospective survey had on his listener. 
He had found occasion for saying the same thing more than 
once before, and was not distinctly aware that he had not 
his port wine before him. 

Well, uncle,” said Tom, with a slight complaint in his 


THE DOWNFALL 249 

tone, “ that’s what I should like to do. Can’t I get on in 
the same way ? ” 

“ In the same way?” said Mr. Deane, eying Tom with 
quiet deliberation. “ There go two or three questions to 
that, Master Tom. That depends on what sort of material 
you are, to begin with, and whether you’ve been put into 
the right mill. But I’ll tell you what it is. Your poor 
father went the wrong way to work in giving you an educa¬ 
tion. It wasn’t my business, and I didn’t interfere; but it 
is as I thought it would be. You’ve had a sort of learning 
that’s all very well for a young fellow like our Mr. Stephen 
Guest, who’ll have nothing to do but sign checks all his life, 
and may as well have Latin inside his head as any other sort 
of stuffing.” 

“ But, uncle,” said Tom, earnestly, “ I don’t see why the 
Latin need hinder me from getting on in business. I shall 
soon forget it all; it makes no difference to me. I had to 
do my lessons at school, but I always thought they’d never 
be of any use to me afterward; I didn’t care about them.” 

“Ay, ay, that’s all very well,” said Mr. Deane; “but it 
doesn’t alter what I was going to say. Your Latin and 
rigmarole may soon dry off you, but you’ll be but a bare 
stick after that. Besides, it’s whitened your hands and taken 
the rough work out of you. And what do you know? Why, 
you know nothing about book-keeping, to begin with, and 
not so much of reckoning as a common shopman. You’ll 
have to begin at a low round of the ladder, let me tell you, 
if you mean to get on in life. It’s no use forgetting the edu¬ 
cation your father’s been paying for, if you don’t give your¬ 
self a new un.” 

Tom bit his lips hard; he felt as if the tears were rising, 
and he would rather die than let them. 

“You want me to help you to a situation,” Mr. Deane 
went on; “ well, I’ve no fault to find with that. I’m willing 
to do something for you. But you youngsters nowadays 
think you’re to begin with living well and working easy; 
you’ve no notion of running afoot before you get on horse¬ 
back. Now, you must remember what you are, — you’re a 


250 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


lad of sixteen, trained to nothing particular. There’s heaps 
of your sort, like so many pebbles, made to fit in nowhere. 
Well, you might be apprenticed to some business, — chem¬ 
ist’s and druggist’s perhaps; your Latin might come in a 
bit there-” 

Tom was going to speak, but Mr. Deane put up his hand 
and said: 

“Stop! hear what I’ve got to say. You don’t want to be 
a ’prentice, — I know, I know, — you want to make more 
haste, and you don’t want to stand behind a counter. But 
if you’re a copying-clerk, you’ll have to stand behind a desk, 
.and stare at your ink and paper all day; there isn’t much 
outlook there, and you won’t be much wiser at the end 
of the year than at the beginning. The world isn’t made of 
pen, ink, and paper, and if you’re to get on in the world, 
young man, you must know what the world’s made of. Now 
the best chance for you ’ud be to have a place on a wharf, 
or in a warehouse, where you’d learn the smell of things, but 
you wouldn’t like that, I’ll be bound; you’d have to stand 
cold and wet, and be shouldered &bout by rough fellows.. 
You’re too fine a gentleman for that.” 

Mr. Deane paused and looked hard at Tom, who cer¬ 
tainly felt some inward struggle before he could reply. 

“ I would rather do what will be best for me in the end, 
sir; I would put up with what was-disagreeable.” 

“ That’s well, if you can carry it out. But you must re¬ 
member it isn’t only laying hold of a rope, you must go on 
pulling. It’s the mistake you lads make that have got 
nothing either in your brains or your pocket, to think you’ve 
got a better start in the world if you stick yourselves in a 
place where you can keep your coats clean, and have the 
shop wenches take you for fine gentlemen. That wasn’t 
the way I started, young man; when I was sixteen, my 
jacket smelt of tar, and I wasn’t afraid of handling cheeses. 
That’s the reason I can wear good broadcloth now, and have 
my legs under the same table with the heads of the best 
firms in St. Ogg’s.” 

Uncle Deane tapped his box, and seemed to expand a 


THE DOWNFALL 


251 


little under his waistcoat and gold chain, as he squared 
his shoulders in the chair. 

“ Is there any place at liberty that you know of now, 
uncle, that I should do for ? I should like to set to work at 
once,” said Tom, with a slight tremor in his voice. 

“Stop a bit, stop a bit; we mustn’t be in too great a 
hurry. You must bear in mind, if I put you in a place 
you’re a bit young for, because you happen to be my 
nephew, I shall be responsible for you. And there’s no better 
reason, you know, than your being my nephew; because it 
remains to be seen whether you’re good for anything.” 

“ I hope I shall never do you any discredit, uncle,” said 
Tom, hurt, as all boys are at the statement of the unpleas¬ 
ant truth that people feel no ground for trusting them. “ I 
care about my own credit too much for that.” 

“ Well done, Tom, well done! That’s the right spirit, and 
I never refuse to help anybody if they’ve a mind to do 
themselves justice. There’s a young man of two-and-twenty 
I’ve got my eye on now. I shall do what I can for that 
young man; he’s got some pith in him. But then, you see, 
he’s made good use of his time, — a first-rate calculator,— 
can tell you the cubic contents of anything in no time, and 
put me up the other day to a new market for Swedish bark; 
he’s uncommonly knowing in manufactures, that young 
fellow ” 

“ I’d better set about learning book-keeping, hadn’t I, 
uncle ? ” said Tom, anxious to prove his readiness to exert 
himself. 

“ Yes, yes, you can’t do amiss there. But— Ah, Spence, 
you’re back again. Well, Tom, there’s nothing more to be 
said just now, I think, and I must go to business again. 
Good-by. Remember me to your mother.” 

Mr. Deane put out his hand, with an air of friendly dis¬ 
missal, and Tom had not courage to ask another question, 
especially in the presence of Mr. Spence. So he went out 
again into the cold damp air. He had to call at his uncle 
Glegg’s about the money in the Savings Bank, and by the 
time he set out again the mist had thickened, and he could 


252 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


not see very far before him; but going along River Street 
again, he was startled, when he was within two yards of 
the projecting side of a shop-window, by the words “ Dorl- 
cote Mill ” in large letters on a hand-bill, placed as if on 
purpose to stare at him. It was the catalogue of the sale 
to take place the next week; it was a reason for hurrying 
faster out of the town. 

Poor Tom formed no visions of the distant future as he 
made his way homeward; he only felt that the present was 
very hard. It seemed a wrong toward him that his uncle 
Deane had no confidence in him, — did not see at once that 
he should acquit himself well, which Tom himself was as 
certain of as of the daylight. Apparently he, Tom Tulliver, 
was likely to be held of small account in the world; and 
for the first time he felt a sinking of heart under the sense 
that he really was very ignorant, and could do very little. 
Who was that enviable young man that could tell the cubic 
contents of things in no time, and make suggestions about 
Swedish bark! Tom had been used to be so entirely satis¬ 
fied with himself, in spite of his breaking down in a demon¬ 
stration, and construing nunc Mas promite vires as “ now 
promise those men ” ; but now he suddenly felt at a dis¬ 
advantage, because he knew less than some one else knew. 
There must be a world of things connected with that Swedish 
bark, which, if he only knew them, might have helped him 
to get on. It would have been much easier to make a figure 
with a spirited horse and a new saddle. 

Two hours ago, as Tom was walking to St. Ogg’s, he saw 
the distant future before him as he might Mve seen a 
tempting stretch of smooth sandy beach beyond a belt 
of flinty shingles; he was on the grassy bank then, and 
thought the shingles might soon be passed. But now his feet 
were on the sharp stones; the belt of shingles had widened, 
and the stretch of sand had dwindled into narrowness. 

“What did my uncle Deane say, Tom?” said Maggie, 
putting her arm through Tom’s as he was warming him¬ 
self rather drearily by the kitchen fire. “ Did he say he 
would give you a situation? ” 


THE DOWNFALL 


253 


“ No, he didn’t say that. He didn’t quite promise me 
anything; he seemed to think I couldn’t have a very good 
situation. I’m too young.” 

“ But didn’t he speak kindly, Tom? ” 

“Kindly? Pooh! what’s the use of talking about that? 
I wouldn’t care about his speaking kindly, if I could get a 
situation. But it’s such a nuisance and bother; I’ve been 
at school all this while learning Latin and things, — not a 
bit of good to me, — and now my uncle says I must set 
about learning book-keeping and calculation, and those 
things. He seems to make out I’m good for nothing.” 

Tom’s mouth twitched with a bitter expression as he 
looked at the fire. 

“Oh, what a pity we haven’t got Dominie Sampson! ” 
said Maggie, who couldn’t help mingling some gayety with 
their sadness. “ If he had taught me book-keeping by 
double entry and after the Italian method, as he did Lucy 
Bertram, I could teach you, Tom.” 

“ You teach! Yes, I dare say. That’s always the tone 
you take,” said Tom. 

“ Dear Tom, I was only joking,” said Maggie, putting her 
cheek against his coat-sleeve. 

“ But it’s always the same, Maggie,” said Tom, with the 
little frown he put on when he was about to be justifiably 
severe. “ You’re always setting yourself up above me and 
every one else, and I’ve wanted to tell you about it several 
times. You ought not to have spoken as you did to my 
uncles and aunts; you should leave it to me to take care of 
my mother and you, and not put yourself forward. You 
think you know better than any one, but you’re almost al¬ 
ways wrong. I can judge much better than you can.” 

Poor Tom! he had just come from being lectured and 
made to feel his inferiority; the reaction of his strong, self- 
asserting nature must take place somehow; and here was a 
case in which he could justly show himself dominant. Mag¬ 
gie’s cheek flushed and her lip quivered with conflicting 
resentment and affection, and a certain awe as well as ad¬ 
miration of Tom’s firmer and more effective character. 


254 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


She did not answer immediately; very angry words rose to 
her lips, but they were driven back again, and she said at 
last: 

“ You often think I’m conceited, Tom, when I don’t mean 
what I say at all in that way. I don’t mean to put my¬ 
self above you; I know you behaved better than I did 
yesterday. But you are always so harsh to me, Tom.” 

With the last words the resentment was rising again. 

“ No, I’m not harsh,” said Tom, with severe decision. 
“ I’m always kind to you, and so I shall be; I shall always 
take care of you. But you must mind what I say.” 

Their mother came in now, and Maggie rushed away, that 
her burst of tears, which she felt must come, might not 
happen till she was safe upstairs. They were very bitter 
tears; everybody in the world seemed so hard and unkind 
to Maggie; there was no indulgence, no fondness, such as 
she imagined when she fashioned the world afresh in her 
own thoughts. In books there were people who were always 
agreeable or tender, and delighted to do things that made 
one happy, and who did not show their kindness by find¬ 
ing fault. The world outside the books was not a happy 
one, Maggie felt; it seemed to be a world where people 
behaved the best to those they did not pretend to love, and 
that did not belong to them. And if life had no love in it, 
what else was there for Maggie? Nothing but poverty and 
the companionship of her mother’s narrow griefs, perhaps 
of her father’s heart-cutting childish dependence. There 
is no hopelessness so sad as that of early youth, when the 
soul is made up of wants, and has no long memories, no 
superadded life in the life of others; though we who look 
on think lightly of such premature despair, as if our vision 
of the future lightened the blind sufferer’s present. 

Maggie, in her brown frock, with her eyes reddened and 
her heavy hair pushed back, looking from the bed where 
her father lay to the dull walls of this sad chamber which 
was the centre of her world, was a creature full of eager, 
passionate longings for all that was beautiful and glad; 
•thirsty for all knowledge; with an ear straining after dreamy 


THE DOWNFALL 


255 


music that died away and would not come near to her; 
with a blind, unconscious yearning for something that would 
link together the wonderful impressions of this mysterious 
life, and give her soul a sense of home in it. 

No wonder, when there is this contrast between the 
outward and the inward, that painful collisions come of it. 


CHAPTER VI 

TENDING TO REFUTE THE POPULAR PREJUDICE AGAINST 
THE PRESENT OF A POCKET-KNIFE 

I N THAT dark time of December, the sale of the house¬ 
hold furniture lasted beyond the middle of the second 
day. Mr. Tulliver, who had begun, in his intervals of con¬ 
sciousness, to manifest an irritability which often appeared 
to have as a direct effect the recurrence of spasmodic rigidity 
and insensibility, had lain in this living death throughout the 
critical hours when the noise of the sale came nearest to 
his chamber. Mr. Turnbull had decided that*it would be 
a less risk to let him remain where he was than to remove 
him to Luke’s cottage, — a plan which the good Luke had 
proposed to Mrs. Tulliver, thinking it would be very bad if 
the master were “ to waken up ” at the noise of the sale; 
and the wife and children had sat imprisoned in the silent 
chamber, watching the large prostrate figure on the bed, 
and trembling lest the blank face should suddenly show 
some response to the sounds which fell on their own ears 
with such obstinate, painful repetition. 

But it was over at last, that time of importunate cer¬ 
tainty and eye-straining suspense. The sharp sound of a 
voice, almost as metallic as the rap that followed it, had 
ceased; the tramping of footsteps on the gravel had died 
out. Mrs. Tulliver’s blond face seemed aged ten years by 
the last thirty hours; the poor woman’s mind had been 
busy divining when her favorite things w T ere being knocked 


256 


MILL OK THE FLOSS 


down by the terrible hammer; her heart had been flutter¬ 
ing at the thought that first one thing and then another 
had gone to be identified as hers in the hateful publicity 
of the Golden Lion; and all the while she had to sit 
and make no sign of this inward agitation. Such things 
bring lines in well-rounded faces, and broaden the streaks 
of white among the hairs that once looked as if they had 
been dipped in pure sunshine. Already, at three o’clock, 
Kezia, the good-hearted, bad-tempered housemaid, who re¬ 
garded all people that came to the sale as her personal 
enemies, the dirt on whose feet was of a peculiarly vile 
quality, had begun to scrub and swill with an energy much 
assisted by a continual low muttering against “ folks as 
came to buy up other folks’s things,” and made light of 
“ scrazing ” the tops of mahogany tables over which better 
folks than themselves had had to ■— suffer a waste of tissue 
through evaporation. She was not scrubbing indiscrimi¬ 
nately, for there would be further dirt of the same atro¬ 
cious kind made by people who had still to fetch away their 
purchases; but she was bent on bringing the parlor, where 
that “ pipe-smoking pig,” the bailiff, had sat, to such an 
appearance *of scant comfort as could be given to it by 
cleanliness and the few articles of furniture bought in for 
the family. Her mistress and the young folks should have 
their tea in it that night, Kezia was determined. 

It was between five and six o’clock, near the usual tea- 
time, when she came upstairs and said that Master Tom 
was wanted. The person who wanted him was in the 
kitchen, and in the first moments, by the imperfect fire 
and candle light, Tom had not even an indefinite sense of 
any acquaintance with the rather broad-set but active 
figure, perhaps two years older than himself, that looked 
at him with a pair of blue eyes set in a disc of freckles, and 
pulled some curly red locks with a strong intention of re¬ 
spect. A low-crowned oilskin-covered hat, and a certain 
shiny deposit of dirt on the rest of the costume, as of 
tablets prepared for writing upon, suggested a calling that 
had to do with boats; but this did not help Tom’s memory. 


THE DOWNFALL 


257 


“ Sarvant, Mr. Tom,” said he of the red locks, with a 
smile which seemed to break through a self-imposed air of 
melancholy. “ You don’t know me again, I doubt,” he went 
on, as Tom continued to look at him inquiringly; “but I’d 
like to talk to you by yourself a bit, please.” 

“ There’s a fire i’ the parlor, Master Tom,” said Kezia, 
who objected to leaving the kitchen in the crisis of toasting. 

“ Come this way, then,” said Tom, wondering if this 
young fellow belonged to Guest & Co.’s Wharf, for his im¬ 
agination ran continually toward that particular spot; and 
uncle Deane might any time be sending for him to say 
that there was a situation at liberty. 

The bright fire in the parlor was the only light that 
showed the few chairs, the bureau, the carpetless floor, and 
the one table — no, not the one table; there was a second 
table, in a corner, with a large Bible and a few other 
books upon it. It was this new strange bareness that Tom 
felt first, before he thought of looking again at the face 
which was also lit up by the fire, and which stole a half-shy, 
questioning glance at him as the entirely strange voice said: 

“ Why! you don’t remember Bob, then, as you gen the 
pocket-knife to, Mr. Tom? ” 

The rough-handled pocket-knife was taken out in the same 
moment, and the largest blade opened by way of irresistible 
demonstration. 

“What! Bob Jakin? ” said Tom, not with any cordial 
delight, for he felt a little ashamed of that early intimacy 
symbolized by the pocket-knife, and was not at all sure 
that Bob’s motives for recalling it were entirely admirable. 

“ Ay, ay; Bob Jakin, if Jakin it must be, ’cause there’s 
so many Bobs as you went arter the squerrils with, that 
day as I plumped right down from the bough, and bruised 
my shins a good un — but I got the squerril tight for all 
that, an’ a scratter it was. An’ this littlish blade s broke, 
you see, but I wouldn’t hev a new un put in, ’cause they 
might be cheatin’ me an’ givin’ me another knife istid, for 
there isn’t such a blade i’ the country, it’s got used to 
my hand, like. An’ there was niver nobody else gen me 


258 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


nothin’ but what I got by my own sharpness, only you, 
Mr. Tom; if it wasn’t Bill Fawks as gen me the terrier pup 
istid o’ drowndin’ it, an’ I had to jaw him a good un afore 
he’d give it me.” 

Bob spoke with a sharp and rather treble volubility, and 
got through his long speech with surprising despatch, giv¬ 
ing the blade of his knife an affectionate rub on his sleeve 
when he had finished. 

“ Well, Bob,” said Tom, with a slight air of patronage, 
the foregoing reminiscences having disposed him to be as 
friendly as was becoming, though there was no part of his 
acquaintance with Bob that he remembered better than 
the cause of their parting quarrel; “ is there anything I 
can do for you? ” 

“ Why, no, Mr. Tom,” answered Bob, shutting up his 
knife with a click and returning it to his pocket, where he 
seemed to be feeling for something else. “ I shouldn’t ha’ 
come back upon you now ye’re i’ trouble, an’ folks say as 
the master, as I used to frighten the birds for, an’ he flogged 
me a bit for fun when he catched me eat'in’ the turnip, as 
they say he’ll niver lift up his head no more, — I shouldn’t 
ha’ come now to ax you to gi’ me another knife ’cause you 
gen me one afore. If a chap gives me one black eye, that’s 
enough for me; I sha’n’t ax him for another afore I sarve 
him out; an’ a good turn’s worth as-much as a bad un, any¬ 
how. I shall niver grow down’ards again, Mr. Tom, an’ 
you war the little chap as I liked the best when I war a little 
chap, for all you leathered me, and wouldn’t look at me 
again. There’s Dick Brumby, there, I could leather him as 
much as I’d a mind; but lors! you get tired o’ leatherin’ a 
chap when you can niver make him see what you want him 
to shy at. I’n seen chaps as ’ud stand starin’ at a bough 
till their eyes shot out, afore they’d see as a bird’s tail 
warn’t a leaf. It’s poor work goin’ wi’ such raff. But you 
war allays a rare un at shying, Mr. Tom, an’ I could trusten 
to you for droppin’ down wi’ your stick in the nick o’ time 
at a runnin’ rat, or a stoat, or that, when I war a-beatin’ 
the bushes.” 


THE DOWNFALL 


259 


Bob had drawn out a dirty canvas bag, and would per¬ 
haps not have paused just then if Maggie had not entered 
the room and darted a look of surprise and curiosity at 
him, whereupon he pulled his red locks again with due re¬ 
spect. But the next moment the sense of the altered room 
came upon Maggie with a force that overpowered the 
thought of Bob's presence. Her eyes had immediately 
glanced from him to the place where the bookcase had 
hung; there was nothing now but the oblong unfaded space 
on the wall, and below it the small table with the Bible and 
the few other books. 

“ Oh, Tom! ” she burst out, clasping her hands, 
“ where are the books ? I thought my uncle Glegg said 
he would buy them. Didn't he? Are those all they’ve 
left us ? " 

“ I suppose so,” said Tom, with a sort of desperate in¬ 
difference. “ Why should they buy many books when they 
bought so little furniture? ” 

“ Oh, but, Tom,” said Maggie, her eyes filling with tears, 
as she rushed up to the table to see what books had been 
rescued. “ Our dear old Pilgrim’s Progress that you colored 
with your little paints; and that picture of Pilgrim with 
a mantle on, looking just like a turtle — oh dear! ” Maggie 
went on, half sobbing as she turned over the few books. 
“ I thought we should never part with that while we lived; 
everything is going away from us; the end of our lives will 
have nothing in it like the beginning! ” 

Maggie turned away from the table and threw herself 
into a chair, with the big tears ready to roll down her 
cheeks, quite blinded to the presence of Bob, who was 
looking at her with the pursuant gaze of an intelligent 
dumb animal, with perceptions more perfect than his com¬ 
prehension. 

“ Well, Bob,” said Tom, feeling that the subject of the 
books was unseasonable, “ I suppose you just came to see 
me because we’re in trouble? That was very good-natured 
of you.” 

“ I’ll tell you how it is, Master Tom,” said Bob, beginning 


260 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


to untwist his canvas bag. “ You see, I’n been with a barge 
this two ’ear; that’s how I’n been gettin’ my livin’, — if it 
wasn’t when I was tentin’ the furnace, between whiles, at 
Torry’s mill. But a fortni’t ago I’d a rare bit o’ luck, — I 
allays thought I was a lucky chap, for I niver set a trap 
but what I catched something; but this wasn’t a trap, it was 
a fire i’ Torry’s mill, an’ I doused it, else it ’ud ha’ set th’ 
oil alight, an’ the genelman gen me ten suvreigns; he gen me 
’em himself last week. An’ he said first, I was a sperrited 
chap, — but I knowed that afore,— but then he outs wi’ 
the ten suvreigns, an’ that war summat new. Here they are, 
all but one! ” Here Bob emptied the canvas bag on the 
table. “ An’ when I’d got ’em, my head was all of a boil 
like a kettle o’ broth, thinkin’ what sort o’ life I should 
take to, for there war a many trades I’d thought on; for 
as for the barge, I’m clean tired out wi’ ’t, for it pulls the 
days out till they’re as long as pigs’ chitterlings. An’ I 
thought first I’d ha’ ferrets an’ dogs, an’ be a rat-catcher; 
an’ then I thought as I should like a bigger way o’ life, as I 
didn’t know so well; for I’n seen to the bottom o’ rat- 
catching; an’ I thought, an’ thought, till at last I settled 
I’d be a packman, — for they’re knowin’ fellers, the pack¬ 
men are, — an’ I’d carry the lightest things I could i’ my 
pack; an’ there’d be a use for a feller’s tongue, as is no use 
neither wi’ rats nor barges. An’ I should go about the 
country far an’ wide, an’ come round the women wi’ my 
tongue, an’ get my dinner hot at the public, — lors! it ’ud 
be a lovely life! ” 

Bob paused, and then said, with defiant decision, as if 
resolutely turning his back on that paradisaic picture: 

“ But I don’t mind about it, not a chip! An’ I’n changed 
one o’ the suvreigns to buy my mother a goose for dinner, 
an’ I’n bought a blue plush wescoat, an’ a sealskin cap,— 
for if I meant to be a packman, I’d do it respectable. But 
I don’t mind about it, not a chip! My yead isn’t a turnip, 
an’ I shall p’r’aps have a chance o’ dousing another fire 
afore long. I’m a lucky chap. So I’ll thank you to take the 
nine suvreigns, Mr. Tom, and set yoursen up with ’em some- 


THE DOWNFALL 261 

how, if it’s true as the master’s broke. They mayn’t go fur 
enough, but they’ll help.” 

Tom was touched keenly enough to forget his pride and 
suspicion. 

“ You’re a very kind fellow, Bob/” he said, coloring, with 
that little diffident tremor in his voice which gave a certain 
charm even to Tom’s pride and severity, “ and I sha’n’t 
forget you again, though I didn’t know you this evening. 
But I can’t take the nine sovereigns; I should be taking 
your little fortune from you, and they wouldn’t do me much 
good either.” 

“ Wouldn’t they, Mr. Tom?” said Bob, regretfully. 
“ Now don’t say so ’cause you think I want ’em. I aren’t 
a poor chap. My mother gets a good penn’orth wi’ picking 
feathers an’ things; an’ if she eats nothin’ but bread-an’- 
water, it runs to fat. An’ I’m such a lucky chap; an’ I doubt 
you aren’t quite so lucky, Mr. Tom, — th’ old master isn’t, 
anyhow, — an’ so you might take a slice o’ my luck, an’ 
no harm done. Lors! I found a leg o’ pork i’ the river 
one day; it had tumbled out o’ one o’ them round-sterned 
Dutchmen, I’ll be bound. Come, think better on it, Mr. 
Tom, for old ’quinetance’ sake, else I shall think you bear 
me a grudge.” 

Bob pushed the sovereigns forward, but before Tom could 
speak Maggie, clasping her hands, and looking penitently 
at Bob, said: 

“ Oh, I’m so sorry, Bob; I never thought you were so 
good. Why, I think you’re the kindest person in the 
world! ” 

Bob had not been aware of the injurious opinion for which 
Maggie was performing an inward act of penitence, but he 
smiled with pleasure at this handsome eulogy, especially 
from a young lass who, as he informed his mother that eve¬ 
ning, had “ such uncommon eyes, they looked somehow as 
they made him feel nohow.” 

“ No, indeed, Bob, I can’t take them,” said Tom; but 
don’t think I feel your kindness less because I say no. I 
don’t want to take anything from anybody, but to work my 


262 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


own way. And those sovereigns wouldn’t help me much — 
they wouldn’t really — if I were to take them. Let me shake 
hands with you instead.” 

Tom put out his pink palm, and Bob was not slow to 
place his hard, grimy hand within it. 

“ Let me put the sovereigns in the bag again,” said 
Maggie; “ and you’ll come and see us when you’ve bought 
your pack, Bob.” 

“ It’s like as if I’d come out o’ make believe, o’ purpose 
to show ’em you,” said Bob, with an air of discontent, as 
Maggie gave him the bag again, “ a-taking ’em back i’ this 
way. I am a bit of a Do, you know; but it isn’t that sort 
o’ Do, — it’s on’y when a feller’s a big rogue, or a big flat, 
I like to let him in a bit, that’s all.” 

“ Now, don’t you be up to any tricks, Bob,” said Tom, 
“ else you’ll get transported some day.” 

“ No, no; not me, Mr. Tom,” said Bob, with an air of 
cheerful confidence. “ There’s no law again’ flea-bites. If 
I wasn’t to take a fool in now and then, he’d niver get 
any wiser. But, lors! hev a suvreign to buy you and 
Miss summat, on’y for a token — just to match my pocket- 
knife.” 

While Bob was speaking he laid down the sovereign, and 
resolutely twisted up his bag again. Tom pushed back 
the gold, and said, “ No, indeed, Bob; thank you heartily, 
but I can’t take it.” And Maggie, taking it between her 
fingers, held it up to Bob and said, more persuasively: 

“ Not now, but perhaps another time. If ever Tom or 
my father wants help that you can give, we’ll let you know; 
won’t we, Tom? That’s what you would like, — to have 
us always depend on you as a friend that we can go to, — 
isn’t it, Bob? ” 

“ Yes, Miss, and thank you,” said Bob, reluctantly taking 
the money; “ that’s what I’d like, anything as you like. An’ 
I wish you good-by, Miss, and good-luck, Mr. Tom, and 
thank you for shaking hands wi’ me, though you wouldn’t 
take the money.” 

Kezia’s entrance, with very black looks, to inquire if she 


THE DOWNFALL 


263 


shouldn’t bring in the tea now, or whether the toast was 
to get hardened to a brick, was a seasonable check on Bob’s 
flux of words, and hastened his parting bow. 


CHAPTER VII 

HOW A HEN TAKES TO STRATAGEM 

T HE days passed, and Mr. Tulliver showed, at least to 
the eyes ol the medical man, stronger and stronger 
symptoms of a gradual return to his normal condition; the 
paralytic obstruction was, little by little, losing its tenacity, 
and the mind was rising from under it with fitful struggles, 
like a living creature making its way from under a great 
snowdrift, that slides and slides again, and shuts up the 
newly made opening. 

Time would have seemed to creep to the watchers by the 
bed, if it had only been measured by the doubtful, distant 
hope which kept count of the moments within the chamber; 
but it was measured for them by a fast-approaching dread 
which made the nights come too quickly. While Mr. Tul¬ 
liver was slowly becoming himself again, his lot was hasten¬ 
ing toward its moment of most palpable change. The 
taxing-masters had done their work like any respectable 
gunsmith conscientiously preparing the musket, that, duly 
pointed by a brave arm, will spoil a life or two. Allocaturs, 
filing of bills in Chancery, decrees of sale, are legal chain- 
shot or bomb-shells that can never hit a solitary mark, but 
must fall with widespread shattering. So deeply inherent 
is it in this life of ours that men have to suffer for each 
other’s sins, so inevitably diffusive is human suffering, that 
even justice makes its victims, and we can conceive no 
retribution that does not spread beyond its mark in pulsa¬ 
tions of unmerited pain. 

By the beginning of the second week in January, the 
bills were out advertising the sale, under a decree of Chan- 


264 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


eery, of Mr. Tulliver’s farming and other stock, to be fol¬ 
lowed by a sale of the mill and land, held in the proper 
after-dinner hour at the Golden Lion. The miller himself, 
unaware of the lapse of time, fancied himself still in that 
first stage of his misfortunes when expedients might be 
thought of; and often in his conscious hours talked in a 
feeble, disjointed manner of plans he would carry out when 
he “ got well.” The wife and children were not without 
hope of an issue that would at least save Mr. Tulliver from 
leaving the old spot, and seeking an entirely strange life. 
For uncle Deane had been induced to interest himself in 
this stage of the business. It would not, he acknowledged, 
be a bad speculation for Guest & Co. to buy Dorlcote Mill, 
and carry on the business, which was a good one, and might 
be increased by the addition of steam power; in which 
case Tulliver might be retained as manager. Still, Mr. 
Deane would say nothing decided about the matter; the 
fact that Wakem held the mortgage on the land might put 
it into his head to bid for the whole estate, and further, to 
outbid the cautious firm of Guest & Co., who did not carry 
on business on sentimental grounds. Mr. Deane was obliged 
to tell Mrs. Tulliver something to that effect, when he rode 
over to the mill to inspect the books in company with Mrs. 
Glegg; for she had observed that “ if Guest & Co. would 
only think about it, Mr. Tulliver’s father and grandfather 
had been carrying on Dorlcote Mill long before the oil-mill 
of that firm had been so much as thought of.” 

Mr. Deane, in reply, doubted whether that was pre¬ 
cisely the relation between the two mills which would de¬ 
termine their value as investments. As for uncle Glegg, the 
thing lay quite beyond his imagination; the good-natured 
man felt sincere pity for the Tulliver family, but his money 
was all locked up in excellent mortgages, and he could run 
no risk; that would be unfair to his own relatives; but he 
had made up his mind that Tulliver should have some new 
flannel waistcoats which he had himself renounced in favor 
of a more elastic commodity, and that he would buy Mrs. 
Tulliver a pound of tea now and then; it would be a journey 


THE DOWNFALL 


265 


which his benevolence delighted in beforehand, to carry 
the tea, and see her pleasure on being assured it was the 
best black. 

Still, it was clear that Mr. Deane was kindly disposed to¬ 
ward the Tullivers. One day he had brought Lucy, who 
was come home for the Christmas holidays, and the little 
blond angel-head had pressed itself against Maggie’s darker 
cheek with many kisses and some tears. These fair slim 
daughters keep up a tender spot in the heart of many a 
respectable partner in a respectable firm, and perhaps 
Lucy’s anxious, pitying questions about her poor cousins 
helped to make uncle Deane more prompt in finding Tom 
a temporary place in the warehouse, and in putting him in 
the way of getting evening lessons in book-keeping and 
calculation. 

That might have cheered the lad and fed his hopes a 
little, if there had not come at the same time the much- 
dreaded blow of finding that his father must be a bankrupt, 
after all; at least, the creditors must be asked to take less 
than their due, which to Tom’s untechnical mind was the 
same thing as bankruptcy. His father must not only be 
said to have “ lost his property,” but to have “ failed,” — 
the word that carried the worst obloquy to Tom’s mind. 
For when the defendant’s claim for costs had been satis¬ 
fied, there would remain the friendly bill of Mr. Gore, 
and the deficiency at the bank, as well as the other debts 
which would make the assets shrink into unequivocal dis¬ 
proportion; “not more than ten or twelve shillings in the 
pound,” predicted Mr. Deane, in a decided tone, tightening 
his lips; and the words fell on Tom like a scalding liquid, 
leaving a continual smart. 

He was sadly in want of something to keep up his spirits 
a little in the unpleasant newness of his position, — sud¬ 
denly transported from the easy carpeted ennui of study- 
hours at Mr. Stelling’s, and the busy idleness of castle¬ 
building in a “ last half ” at school, to the companionship 
of sacks and hides, and bawling men thundering down heavy 
weights at his elbow. The first step toward getting on in 


266 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


the world was a chill, dusty, noisy affair, and implied going 
without one’s tea in order to stay in St..Ogg’s and have an 
evening lesson from a one-armed elderly clerk, in a room 
smelling strongly of bad tobacco. Tom’s young pink-and- 
white face had its colors very much deadened by the time 
he took off his hat at home, and sat down with keen hunger 
to his supper. No wonder he was a little cross if his mother 
or Maggie spoke to him. 

But all this while Mrs. Tulliver was brooding over a 
scheme by which she, and no one else, would avert the 
result most to be dreaded, and prevent Wakem from en¬ 
tertaining the purpose of bidding for the mill. Imagine a 
truly respectable and amiable hen, by some portentous 
anomaly, taking to reflection and inventing combinations 
by which she might prevail on Hodge not to wring her neck, 
or send her and her chicks to market; the result could 
hardly be other than much cackling and fluttering. Mrs. 
Tulliver, seeing that everything had gone wrong, had begun 
to think she had been too passive in life; and that, if she 
had applied her mind to business, and taken a strong resolu¬ 
tion now and then, it would have been all the better for 
her and her family. 

Nobody, it appeared, had thought of going to speak to 
Wakem on this business of the mill; and yet, Mrs. Tulliver 
reflected, it would have been quite the shortest method of 
securing the right end. It would have been of no use, to 
be sure, for Mr. Tulliver to go, — even if he had been able 
and willing, — for he had been “ going to law against 
Wakem” and abusing him for the last ten years; Wakem 
was always likely to have a spite against him. And now T 
that Mrs. Tulliver had come to the conclusion that her 
husband was very much in the wrong to bring her into this 
trouble, she was inclined to think that his opinion of Wakem 
was wrong too. To be sure, Wakem had “ put the bailies 
in the house, and sold them up ”; but she supposed he did 
that to please the man that lent Mr. Tulliver the money, 
for a lawyer had more folks to please than one, and he wasn’t 
likely to put Mr. Tulliver, who had gone to law with him, 


THE DOWNFALL 


267 


above everybody else in the world. The attorney might be 
a very reasonable man; why not? He had married a 
Miss Clint, and at the time Mrs. Tulliver had heard of that 
marriage, the summer when she wore her blue satin spencer, 
and had not yet any thoughts of Mr. Tulliver, she knew no 
harm of Wakem. And certainly toward herself, whom he 
knew to have been a Miss Dodson, it was out of all possi¬ 
bility that he could entertain anything but good-will, when 
it was once brought home to his observation that she, for 
her part, had never wanted to go to law, and indeed was 
at present disposed to take Mr. Wakem’s view of all sub¬ 
jects rather than her husband’s. In fact, if that attorney 
saw a respectable matron like herself disposed “ to give him 
good words,” why shouldn’t he listen to her representations? 
For she would put the matter clearly before him, which had 
never been done yet. And he would never go and bid for 
the mill on purpose to spite her, an innocent woman, who 
thought it likely enough that she had danced with him in 
their youth at Squire Darleigh’s, for at those big dances she 
had often and often danced with young men whose names 
she had forgotten. 

Mrs. Tulliver hid these reasonings in her own bosom; 
for when she had thrown out a hint to Mr. Deane and Mr. 
Glegg that she wouldn’t mind going to speak to Wakem 
herself, they had said, “ No, no, no,” and “ Pooh, pooh,” 
and “ Let Wakem alone,” in the tone of men who were 
not likely to give a candid attention to a more definite ex¬ 
position of her project; still less dared she mention the 
plan to Tom and Maggie, for “ the children were always so 
against everything their mother said”; and Tom, she ob¬ 
served, was almost as much set against Wakem as his father 
was. But this unusual concentration of thought naturally 
gave Mrs. Tulliver an unusual power of devic.e and deter¬ 
mination; and a day or two before the sale, to be held at 
the Golden Lion, when there was no longer any time to 
be lost, she carried out her plan by a stratagem. There 
were pickles in question, a large stock of pickles and 
ketchup which Mrs. Tulliver possessed, and which Mr. 


268 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


Hyndmarsh, the grocer, would certainly purchase if she 
could transact the business in a personal interview, so she 
would walk with Tom to St. Ogg’s that morning; and when 
Tom urged that she might let the pickles be at present, — 
he didn’t like her to go about just yet, — she appeared so 
hurt at this conduct in her son, contradicting her about 
pickles which she had made after the family receipts in¬ 
herited from his own grandmother, who had died when his 
mother was a little girl, that he gave way, and they walked 
together until she turned toward Danish Street, where Mr. 
Hyndmarsh retailed his grocery, not far from the offices of 
Mr. Wakem. 

That gentleman was not yet come to his office; would 
Mrs. Tulliver sit down by the fire in his private rooni 
and wait for him? She had not long to wait before the 
punctual attorney entered, knitting his brow with an ex¬ 
amining glance at the stout blond woman who rose, curtsy¬ 
ing deferentially, — a tallish man, with an aquiline nose 
and abundant iron-gray hair. You have never seen Mr. 
Wakem before, and are possibly wondering whether he was 
really as eminent a rascal, and as crafty, bitter an enemy 
of honest humanity in general, and of Mr. Tulliver in par¬ 
ticular, as he is represented to be in that eidolon, or por¬ 
trait, of him which we have seen to exist in the miller’s 
mind. 

It is clear that the irascible miller was a man to interpret 
any chance-shot that grazed him as an attempt on his own 
life, and was liable to entanglements in this puzzling world, 
which, due consideration had to his own infallibility, re¬ 
quired the hypothesis of a very active diabolical agency to 
explain them. It is still possible to believe that the attorney 
was not more guilty toward him than an ingenious machine, 
which performs its work with much regularity, is guilty to¬ 
ward the rash man who, venturing too near it, is caught up 
by some fly-wheel or other, and suddenly converted into 
unexpected mince-meat. 

But it is really impossible to decide this question by a 
glance at his person; the lines and lights of the human 


THE DOWNFALL 


269 


countenance are like other symbols, — not always easy to 
read without a key. On an a 'priori view of Wakem’s aqui¬ 
line nose, which offended Mr. Tulliver, there was not more 
rascality than in the shape of his stiff shirt-collar, though 
this too, along with his nose, might have become fraught 
with damnatory meaning when once the rascality was as¬ 
certained. 

“ Mrs. Tulliver, I think? ” said Mr. Wakem. 

“ Yes, sir; Miss Elizabeth Dodson as was.” 

“ Pray be seated. You have some business with me? ” 

“ Well, sir, yes,” said Mrs. Tulliver, beginning to feel 
alarmed at her own courage, now she was really in the 
presence of the formidable man, and reflecting that she had 
not settled with herself how she should begin. Mr. Wakem 
felt in his waistcoat pockets, and looked at her in silence. 

“ I hope, sir,” she began at last, — “ I hope, sir, you’re not 
a-thinking as I bear you any ill-will because o’ my husband’s 
losing his lawsuit, and the bailies being put in, and the linen 
being sold, — oh dear! — for I wasn’t brought up in that 
way. I’m sure you remember my father, sir, for he was 
close friends with Squire Darleigh, and we allays went to 
the dances there, the Miss Dodsons, — nobody could be 
more looked on, — and justly, for there was four of us, and 
you’re quite aware as Mrs. Glegg and Mrs. Deane are my 
sisters. And as for going to law and losing money, and hav¬ 
ing sales before you’re dead, I never saw anything o’ that 
before I was married, nor for a long while after. And I’m 
not to be answerable for my bad luck i’ marrying out o’ my 
own family into one where the goings-on was different. And 
as for being drawn in t’ abuse you as other folks abuse you, 
sir, that I niver was, and nobody can say it of me.” 

Mrs. Tulliver shook her head a little, and looked at the 
hem of her pocket-handkerchief. 

“ I’ve no doubt of what you say, Mrs. Tulliver,” said Mr. 
Wakem, with cold politeness. “ But you have some ques¬ 
tion to ask me? ” 

“ Well, sir, yes. But that’s what I’ve said to myself, — 
I’ve said you’d had some nat’ral feeling; and as for my hus- 


270 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


band, as hasn’t been himself for this two months, I’m not 
a-defending him, in no way, for being so hot about th’ eriga- 
tion, — not but what there’s worse men, for he never 
wronged nobody of a shilling nor a penny, not willingly; 
and as for his fieriness and la wing, what could I do? And 
him struck as if it was with death when he got the letter as 
said you’d the hold upo’ the land. But I can’t believe but 
what you’ll behave as a gentleman.” 

“ What does all this mean, Mrs. Tulliver? ” said Mr. 
Wakem, rather sharply. “ What do you want to ask me? ” 
“ Why, sir, if you’ll be so good,” said Mrs. Tulliver, start¬ 
ing a little, and speaking more hurriedly, — “ if you’ll be so 
good not to buy the mill an’ the land, — the land wouldn’t 
so much matter, only my husband ’ull be like mad at your 
having it.” 

Something like a new thought flashed across Mr. Wakem’s 
face as he said, “ Who told you I meant to buy it? ” 

“ Why, sir, it’s none o’ my inventing, and I should never 
ha’ thought of it;'for my husband, as ought to know about 
the law, he allays used to say as lawyers had never no call 
to buy anything, — either lands or houses, — for they allays 
got ’em into their hands other ways. An’ I should think 
that ’ud be the way with you, sir; and I niver said as you’d 
be the man to do contrairy to that.” 

“Ah, well, who was it that did say so?” said Wakem, 
opening his desk, and moving things about, with the accom¬ 
paniment of an almost inaudible whistle. 

“ Why, sir, it was Mr. Glegg and Mr. Deane, as have all 
the management; and Mr. Deane thinks as Guest & Co. ’ud 
buy the mill and let Mr. Tulliver work it for ’em, if you 
didn’t bid for it and raise the price. And it ’ud be such a 
thing for my husband to stay where he is, if he could get 
his living; for it was his father’s before him, the mill was, 
and his grandfather built it, though I wasn’t fond o’ the 
noise of it, when first I was married, for there was no mills 
in our family, — not the Dodsons’, — and if I’d known as 
the mills had so much to do with the law, it wouldn’t have 
been me as ’ud have been the first Dodson to marry one; but 


THE DOWNFALL 271 

I went into it blindfold, that I did, erigation and every¬ 
thing.” 

“ What! Guest & Co. would keep the mill in their own 
hands, I suppose, and pay your husband wages? ” 

“ Oh dear, sir, it’s hard to think of,” said poor Mrs. Tulli- 
ver, a little tear making its way, “ as my husband should 
take wage. But it ’ud look more like what used to be, to 
stay at the mill than to go anywhere else; and if you’ll only 
think — if you was to bid for the mill and buy it, my hus¬ 
band might be struck worse than he was before, and niver 
get better again as he’s getting now.” 

“ Well, but if I bought the mill, and allowed your husband 
to act as my manager in the same way, how then ? ” said Mr. 
Wakem. 

“ Oh, sir, I doubt he could niver be got to do it, not if the 
very mill stood still to beg and pray of him. For your 
name’s like poison to him, it’s so as never was; and he looks 
upon it as you’ve been the ruin of him all along, ever since 
you set the law on him about the road through the meadow, 
— that’s eight year ago, and he’s been going on ever since — 
as I’ve allays told him he was wrong-” 

“He’s a pig-headed, foul-mouthed fool! ” burst out Mr. 
Wakem, forgetting himself. 

“ Oh dear, sir! ” said Mrs. Tulliver, frightened at a result 
so different from the one she had fixed her mind on; “I 
wouldn’t wish to contradict you, but it’s like enough he’s 
changed his mind with this illness, — he’s forgot a many 
things he used to talk about. And you wouldn’t like to have 
a corpse on your mind, if he was to die; and they do say as 
it’s allays unlucky when Dorleote Mill changes hands, and 
the water might all run away, and then — not as I’m wishing 
you any ill-luck, sir, for I forgot to tell you as I remember 
your wedding as if it was yesterday; Mrs. Wakem was a 
Miss Clint, I know that; and my boy, as there isn’t a nicer, 
handsomer, straighter boy nowhere, went to school with 
your son-” 

Mr. Wakem rose, opened the door, and called to one of 
his clerks. 


272 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


“ You must excuse me for interrupting you, Mrs. Tulli- 
ver; I have business that must be attended to; and I think 
there is nothing more necessary to be said.” 

“ But if you would bear it in mind, sir,” said Mrs. Tulli- 
ver, rising, “ and not run against me and my children; and 
I’m not denying Mr. Tulliver’s been in the wrong, but he’s 
been punished enough, and there’s worse men, for it’s been 
giving to other folks has been his fault. He’s done nobody 
any harm but himself and his family, — the more’s the pity, 
— and I go and look at the bare shelves every day, and 
think where all my things used to stand.” 

“ Yes, yes, I’ll bear it in mind,” said Mr. Wakem, hastily, 
looking toward the op§n door. 

“ And if you’d please not to say as I’ve been to speak to 
you, for my son ’ud be very angry with me for demeaning 
myself, I know he would, and I’ve trouble enough without 
being scolded by my children.” 

Poor Mrs. Tulliver’s voice trembled a little, and she could 
make no answer to the attorney’s “ good morning,” but curt¬ 
sied and walked out in silence. 

“ Which day is it that Dorlcote Mill is to be sold? 
Where’s the bill? ” said Mr. Wakem to his clerk when they 
were alone. 

“ Next Friday is the day, — Friday at six o’clock.” 

“ Oh, just run to Winship’s, the auctioneer, and see if he’s 
at home. I have some business for him; ask him to 
come up.” 

Although, when Mr. Wakem entered his office that morn¬ 
ing, he had had no intention of purchasing Dorlcote Mill, his 
mind was already made up. Mrs. Tulliver had suggested 
to him several determining motives, and his mental glance 
was very rapid; he was one of those men who can be 
prompt without being rash, because their motives run in 
fixed tracks, and they have no need to reconcile conflicting 
aims. 

To suppose that Wakem had the same sort of inveterate 
hatred toward Tulliver that Tulliver had toward him would 
be like supposing that a pike and a roach can look at each 


THE DOWNFALL 


273 


other from a similar point of view. The roach necessarily 
abhors the mode in which the pike gets his living, and the 
pike is likely to think nothing further even of the most in¬ 
dignant roach than that he is excellent good eating; it could 
only be when the roach choked him that the pike could en¬ 
tertain a strong personal animosity. If Mr. Tulliver had 
ever seriously injured or thwarted the attorney, Wakem 
would not have refused him the distinction of being a special 
object of his vindictiveness. But when Mr. Tulliver called 
Wakem a rascal at the market dinner-table, the attorney's 
clients were not a whit inclined to withdraw their business 
from him; and if, when Wakem himself happened to be 
present, some jocose cattle-feeder, stimulated by opportu¬ 
nity and brandy, made a thrust at him by alluding to old 
ladies' wills, he maintained perfect sang froid, and knew 
quite well that the majority of substantial men then present 
were perfectly contented with the fact that “ Wakem was 
Wakem ”; that is to say, a man who always knew the 
stepping-stones that would carry him through very muddy 
bits of practice. A man who had made a large fortune, had 
a handsome house among the trees at Tofton, and decidedly 
the finest stock of port wine in the neighborhood of St. Ogg's, 
was likely to feel himself on a level with public opinion. 
And I am not sure that even honest Mr. Tulliver himself, 
with his general view of law as a cockpit, might not, under 
opposite circumstances, have seen a fine appropriateness in 
the truth that “ Wakem was Wakem "; since I have under¬ 
stood from persons versed in history, that mankind is not 
disposed to look narrowly into the conduct of great victors 
when their victory is on the right side. Tulliver, then, 
could be no obstruction to Wakem; on the contrary, he was 
a poor devil whom the lawyer had defeated several times; a 
hot-tempered fellow, who would always give you a handle 
against him. Wakem's conscience was not uneasy because 
he had used a few tricks against the miller; why should he 
hate that unsuccessful plaintiff, that pitiable, furious bull 
entangled in the meshes of a net? 

Still, among the various excesses to which human nature 


274 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


is subject, moralists have never numbered that of being too 
fond of the people who openly revile us. 

Now Mrs. Tulliver had put the notion into his head, it 
presented itself to him as a pleasure to do the very thing 
that would cause Mr. Tulliver the most deadly mortifica¬ 
tion,— and a pleasure of a complex kind, not made up of 
crude malice, but mingling with it the relish of self-appro¬ 
bation. To see an enemy humiliated gives a certain content¬ 
ment, but this is jejune compared with the highly blent 
satisfaction of seeing him humiliated by your benevolent ac¬ 
tion or concession on his behalf. That is a sort of revenge 
which falls into the scale of virtue, and Wakem was not 
without an intention of keeping that scale respectably filled. 
He had once had the pleasure of putting an old enemy of 
his into one of the St. Ogg’s alms-houses, to the rebuilding 
of which he had given a large subscription; and here was an 
opportunity of providing for another by making him his 
own servant. Such things give a completeness to prosper¬ 
ity, and contribute elements of agreeable consciousness that 
are not dreamed of by that short-sighted, overheated vin¬ 
dictiveness which goes out of its way to wreak itself in direct 
injury. And Tulliver, with his rough tongue filed by a sense 
of obligation, would make a better servant than any chance- 
fellow who was cap-in-hand for a situation. Tulliver was 
known to be a man of proud honesty, and Wakem was too 
acute not to believe in the existence of honesty. He was 
given to observing individuals, not to judging of them ac¬ 
cording to maxims, and no one knew better than he that all 
men were not like himself. Besides, he intended to overlook 
the whole business of land and mill pretty closely; he was 
fond of these practical rural matters. But there were good 
reasons for purchasing Dorlcote Mill, quite apart from any 
benevolent vengeance on the miller. It was really a capital 
investment; besides, Guest & Co. were going to bid for it. 
Mr. Guest and Mr. Wakem were on friendly dining t^ms, 
and the attorney liked to predominate over a ship-owner 
and mill-owner who was a little too loud in the town affairs 
as well as in his table-talk. For Wakem was not a mere man 


THE DOWNFALL 


275 


of business; he was considered a pleasant fellow in the upper 
circles of St. Ogg’s — chatted amusingly over his port wine, 
did a little amateur farming, and had certainly been an ex¬ 
cellent husband and father; at church, when he went there, 
he sat under the handsomest of mural monuments erected 
to the memory of his wife. Most men would have married 
again under his circumstances, but he was said to be more 
tender to his deformed son than most men were to their 
best-shapen offspring. 

These were the mental conditions on which Mrs. Tulliver 
had undertaken to act persuasively, and had failed; a fact 
which may receive some illustration from the remark of a 
great philosopher, that fly-fishers fail in preparing their bait 
so as to make it alluring in the right quarter, for want of a 
due acquaintance with the subjectivity of fishes. 


CHAPTER VIII 

DAYLIGHT ON THE WRECK 

I T WAS a clear frosty January day on which Mr. Tulliver 
first came downstairs. The bright sun on the chestnut 
boughs and the roofs opposite his window had made him 
impatiently declare that he would be caged up no longer; he 
thought everywhere would be more cheery under this sun¬ 
shine than his bedroom; for he knew nothing of the bareness 
below, which made the flood of sunshine importunate, as if 
it had an unfeeling pleasure in showing the empty places, 
and the marks where well-known objects once had been. 
The impression on his mind that it was but yesterday when 
he received the letter from Mr. Gore was so continually im¬ 
plied in his talk, and the attempts to convey to him the 
idea„that many weeks had passed and much had happened 
since then had been so soon swept away by recurrent forget¬ 
fulness, that even Mr. Turnbull had begun to despair of 
preparing him to meet the facts by previous knowledge. 


/ 


276 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


The full sense of the present could only be imparted 
gradually by new experience, — not by mere words, which 
must remain weaker than the impressions left by the old 
experience. 

This resolution to come downstairs was heard with trem¬ 
bling by the wife and children. Mrs. Tulliver said Tom 
must not go to St. Ogg’s at the usual hour, he must wait and 
see his father downstairs; and Tom complied, though with 
an intense inward shrinking from the painful scene. The 
hearts of all three had been more deeply dejected than ever 
during the last few days. For Guest & Co. had not bought 
the mill; both mill and land had been knocked down to 
Wakem, who had been over the premises, and had laid be¬ 
fore Mr. Deane and Mr. Glegg, in Mrs. Tulliver’s presence, 
his willingness to employ Mr. Tulliver, in case of his recov¬ 
ery, as a manager of the business. This proposition had 
occasioned much family debating. Uncles and aunts were 
almost unanimously of opinion that such an offer ought not 
to be rejected when there was nothing in the way but a 
feeling in Mr. Tulliver’s mind, which, as neither aunts nor 
uncles shared it, was regarded as entirely unreasonable and 
childish, — indeed, as a transferring toward Wakem of that 
indignation and hatred which Mr. Tulliver ought properly 
to have directed against himself for his general quarrelsome¬ 
ness, and his special exhibition of it in going to law. Here 
was an opportunity for Mr. Tulliver to provide for his wife 
and daughter without any assistance from his wife’s rela¬ 
tions, and without that too evident descent into pauperism 
which makes it annoying to respectable people to meet the 
degraded member of the family by the wayside. Mr. Tulli¬ 
ver, Mrs. Glegg considered, must be made to feel, when he 
came to his right mind, that he could never humble himself 
enough; for that had come which she had always foreseen 
would come of his insolence in time past “ to them as were 
the best friends he’d got to look to.” Mr. Glegg and Mr. 
Deane were less stern in their views, but they both of them 
thought Tulliver had done enough harm by his hot-tempered 
crotchets, and ought to put them out of the question when 


THE DOWNFALL 277 

a livelihood was offered him; Wakem showed a right feeling 
about the matter, — he had no grudge against Tulliver. 

Tom had protested against entertaining the proposition. 
He shouldn’t like his father to be under Wakem; he thought 
it would look mean-spirited; but his mother’s main distress 
was the utter impossibility of ever “ turning Mr. Tulliver 
round about Wakem,” or getting him to hear reason; no, 
they would all have to go and live in a pigsty on purpose to 
spite Wakem, who spoke “ so as nobody could be fairer.” 
Indeed, Mrs. Tulliver’s mind was reduced to such confusion 
by living in this strange medium of unaccountable sorrow, 
against which she continually appealed by asking, “ Oh dear, 
what have I done to deserve worse than other woman?” 
that Maggie began to suspect her poor mother’s wits were 
quite going. 

“ Tom,” she said, when they were out of their father’s 
room together, “ we must try to make father understand a 
little of what has happened before he goes downstairs. But 
we must get my mother away. She will say something that 
will do harm. Ask Kezia to fetch her down, and keep her 
engaged with something in the kitchen.” 

Kezia was equal to the task. Having declared her inten¬ 
tion of staying till the master could get about again, “ wage 
or no wage,” she had found a certain recompense in keeping 
a strong hand over her mistress, scolding her for “ moither- 
ing ” herself, and going about all day without changing her 
cap, and looking as if she was “ mushed.” Altogether, this 
time of trouble was rather a Saturnalian tim& to Kezia; she 
could scold her betters with unreproved freedom. On this 
particular occasion there were drying clothes to be fetched 
in; she wished to know if one pair of hands could do every¬ 
thing in-doors and out, and observed that she should have 
thought it would be good for Mrs. Tulliver to put on her 
bonnet, and get a breath of fresh air by doing that needful 
‘ piece of work. Poor Mrs. Tulliver went submissively down¬ 
stairs; to be ordered about by a servant was the last rem¬ 
nant of her household dignities, — she would soon have no 
servant to scold her. Mr. Tulliver was resting in his chair 


278 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


a little after the fatigue of dressing, and Maggie and Tom 
were seated near him, when Luke entered to ask if he should 
help master downstairs. 

“ Ay, ay, Luke; stop a bit, sit down,” said Mr. Tulliver, 
pointing his stick toward a chair, and looking at him with 
that pursuant gaze which convalescent persons ofterf have 
for those who have tended them, reminding one of an infant 
gazing about after its nurse. For Luke had been a constant 
night-watcher by his master’s bed. 

“How’s the water now, eh, Luke?” said Mr. Tulliver. 
“ Dix hasn’t been choking you up again, eh ? ” 

“ No, sir, it’s all right.” 

“ Ay, I thought not; he won’t be in a hurry at that again, 
now Riley’s been to settle him. That was what I said to 
Riley yesterday — I said-” 

Mr. Tulliver leaned forward, resting his elbows on the 
arm-chair, ahd looking on the ground as if in search of 
something, striving after vanishing images like a man 
struggling against a doze. Maggie looked at Tom in mute 
distress, their father’s mind was so far off the present, 
which would by-and-by thrust itself on his wandering 
consciousness! Tom was almost ready to rush away, 
with that impatience of painful emotion which makes one 
of the differences between youth and maiden, man and 
woman. 

“ Father,” said Maggie, laying her hand on his, “ don’t 
you remember that Mr. Riley is dead? ” 

“ Dead? ” ^aid Mr. Tulliver, sharply, looking in her face 
with a strange, examining glance. 

“ Yes, he died of apoplexy nearly a year ago. I remember 
hearing you say you had to pay money for him; and he left 
his daughters badly off; one of them is under-teacher at 
Miss Firniss’s, where I’ve been to school, you know.” 

“Ah?” said her father, doubtfully, still looking in her 
face. But as soon as Tom began to speak he turned to look 
at him with the same inquiring glances, as if he were rather 
surprised at the presence of these two young people. When¬ 
ever his mind was wandering in the far past, he fell into this 


THE DOWNFALL 279 

oblivion of their actual faces; they were not those of the 
lad and the little wench who belonged to that past. 

“ It’s a long while since you had the dispute with Dix, 
father/’ said Tom. “I remember your talking about it 
three years ago, before I went to school at Mr. Stelling’s. 
I’ve been at school there three years; don’t you remember? ” 

Mr. Tulliver threw himself backward again, losing the 
childlike outward glance under a rush of new ideas, which 
diverted him from external impressions. 

“ Ay, ay,” he said, after a minute or two, “ I’ve paid a 
deal o’ money — I was determined my son should have a 
good eddication; I’d none myself, and I’ve felt the miss of 
it. And he’ll want no other fortin, that’s what I say — if 
Wakem was to get the better of me again-” 

The thought of Wakem roused new vibrations, and after 
a moment’s pause he began to look at the coat he had on, 
and to feel in his side-pocket. Then he turned to Tom, and 
said in his old sharp way, “ Where have they put Gore’s 
letter ? ” 

It was close at hand in a drawer, for he had often asked 
for it before. 

“You know what there is in the letter, father?” said 
Tom, as he gave it to him. 

“To be sure I do,” said Mr. Tulliver, rather angrily. 
“What o’ that? If Furley can’t take to the property, 
somebody else can; there’s plenty o’ people in the world be¬ 
sides Furley. But it’s hindering — my not being well — go 
and tell ’em to get the horso in the gig, Luke; I can get 
down to St. Ogg’s well enough — Gore’s expecting me.” 

“ No, dear father! ” Maggie burst out entreatingly; “it’s 
a very long while since all that; you’ve been ill a great many 
weeks, — more than two months; everything is changed.” 

Mr. Tulliver looked at them all three alternately with a 
startled gaze; the idea that much had happened of which he 
knew nothing had often transiently arrested him before, but 
it came upon him now with entire novelty. 

“Yes, father,” said Tom, in answer to the gaze. “You 
needn’t trouble your mind about business until you are 


280 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


quite well; everything is settled about that for the present, 
— about the mill and the land and the debts.” 

“ What’s settled, then ? ” said his father, angrily. 

“ Don’t you take on too much about it, sir,” said Luke. 
“You’d ha’ paid iverybody if you could, — that’s what I 
said to Master Tom, — I said you’d ha’ paid iverybody if 
you could.” 

Good Luke felt, after the manner of contented hard¬ 
working men whose lives have been spent in servitude, that 
sense of natural fitness in rank which made his master’s 
downfall a tragedy to him. He was urged, in his slow way, 
to say something that would express his share in the family 
sorrow; and these words, which he had used over and over 
again to Tom when he wanted to decline the full payment 
of his fifty pounds out of the children’s money, were the 
most ready to his tongue. They were just the words to lay 
the most painful hold on his master’s bewildered mind. 

“ Paid everybody ? ” he said, with vehement agitation, his 
face flushing, and his eye lighting up. “Why — what — 
have they made me a bankrupt? ” 

“ Oh, father, dear father! ” said Maggie, who thought 
that terrible word really represented the fact; “ bear it well, 
because we love you; your children will always love you. 
Tom will pay them all; he says he will, when he’s a man.” 

She felt her father beginning to tremble; his voice trem¬ 
bled too, as he said, after a few moments: 

“ Ay, my little wench, but I shall never live twice o’er.” 

“ But perhaps you will live to see me pay everybody, 
father,” said Tom, speaking with a great effort. 

“ Ah, my lad,” said Mr. Tulliver, shaking his head slowly, 
“ but what’s broke can never be whole again; it ’ud be your 
doing, not mine.” Then looking up at him, “ You’re only 
sixteen; it’s an up-hill fight for you, but you mustn’t throw 
it at your father; the raskills have been too many for him. 
I’ve given you a good eddication, — that’ll start you.” 

Something in his throat half choked the last words; the 
flush, which had alarmed his children because it had so often 
preceded a recurrence of paralysis, had subsided, and his 


THE DOWNFALL 


281 


face looked pale and tremulous. Tom said nothing; he was 
still struggling against his inclination to rush away. His 
father remained quiet a minute or two, but his mind did not 
seem to be wandering again. 

“ Have they sold me up, then ? ” he said more calmly, as 
if he were possessed simply by the desire to know what had 
happened. 

“ Everything is sold, father; but we don’t know all about 
the mill and the land yet,” said Tom, anxious to ward off 
any question leading to the fact that Wakem was the pur¬ 
chaser. 

“ You must not be surprised to see the room look very 
bare downstairs, father,” said Maggie; “but there’s your 
chair and the bureau; they’re not gone.” 

“ Let us go; help me down, Luke, — I’ll go and see every¬ 
thing,” said Mr. Tulliver, leaning on his stick, and stretching 
out his other hand toward Luke. 

“ Ay, sir,” said Luke, as he gave his arm to his master, 
“ you’ll make up your mind to ’t a bit better when you’ve 
seen iverything; you’ll get used to ’t. That’s what my 
mother says about her shortness o’ breath, — she says she’s 
made friends wi’ ’t now, though she fought again’ it sore 
when it just come on.” 

Maggie ran on before to see that all was right in the 
dreary parlor, where the fire, dulled by the frosty sunshine, 
seemed part of the general shabbiness. She turned her 
father’s chair, and pushed aside the table to make an easy 
way for him, and then stood with a beating heart to see him 
enter and look round for the first time. Tom advanced be¬ 
fore him, carrying the leg-rest, and stood beside Maggie on 
the hearth. Of those two young hearts Tom’s suffered the 
most unmixed pain, for Maggie, with all her keen suscepti¬ 
bility, yet felt as if the sorrow made larger room for her love 
to flow in, and gave breathing-space to her passionate na¬ 
ture. No true boy feels that; he would rather go and slay 
the Nemean lion, or perform any round of heroic labors, 
than endure perpetual appeals to his pity, for evils over 
which he can make no conquest. 


282 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


Mr. Tulliver paused just inside the door, resting on Luke, 
and looking round him at all the bare places, which for him 
were filled with the shadows of departed objects, — the 
daily companions of his life. His faculties seemed to be re¬ 
newing their strength from getting a footing on this demon¬ 
stration of the senses. 

“ Ah! ” he said slowly, moving toward his chair, “ they’ve 
sold me up — they’ve sold me up.” 

Then seating himself, and laying down his stick, while 
Luke left the room, he looked round again. 

“ They’ve left the big Bible,” he said. “ It’s got everything 
in, — when I was born and married; bring it, me, Tom.” 

The quarto Bible was laid open before him at the fly-leaf, 
and while he was reading with slowly travelling eyes, Mrs. 
Tulliver entered the room, but stood in mute surprise to find 
her husband down already, and with the great Bible before 
him. 

“ Ah,” he said, looking at a spot where his finger rested, 
“ my mother was Margaret Beaton; she died when she was 
forty-seven, — hers wasn’t a long-lived family; we’re our 
mother’s children, Gritty and me are, — we shall go to our 
last bed before long.” 

He seemed to be pausing over the record of his sister’s 
birth and marriage, as if it were suggesting new thoughts to 
him; then he suddenly looked up at Tom, and said, in a 
sharp tone of alarm: 

“ They haven’t come upo’ Moss for the money as I lent 
him, have they ? ” 

“ No, father,” said Tom; “ the note was burnt.” 

Mr. Tulliver turned his eyes on the page again, and pres¬ 
ently said: 

“ Ah — Elizabeth Dodson — it’s eighteen years since I 
married her-” 

“ Come next Lady-day,” said Mrs. Tulliver, going up to 
his side and looking at the page. 

Her husband fixed his eyes earnestly on her face. 

“ Poor Bessy,” he said, “ you was a pretty lass then, — 
everybody said so, — and I used to think you kept your 


THE DOWNFALL 


283 


good looks rarely. But you’re sorely aged; don’t you bear 
me ill-will — I meant to do well by you — we promised one 
another for better or for worse-” 

“ But I never thought it ’ud be ‘so for worse as this,” said 
poor Mrs. Tulliver, with the strange, scared look that had 
come over her of late; “ and my poor father gave me away 
— and to come on so all at once-” 

“ Oh, mother! ” said Maggie, “ don’t talk in that way.” 

“No, I know you won’t let your poor mother speak — 
that’s been the way all my life — your father never minded 
what I said — it ’ud have been o’ no use for me to beg and 
pray — and it ’ud be no use now, not if I was to go down 
o’ my hands and knees-” 

“ Don’t say so, Bessy,” said Mr. Tulliver, whose pride, in 
these first moments of humiliation, was in abeyance to the 
sense of some justice in his wife’s reproach. “ If there’s any¬ 
thing left as I could do to make you amends, I wouldn’t say 
you nay.” 

“ Then we might stay here and get a living, and I might 
keep among my own sisters, — and me been such a good 
wife to you, and never crossed you from week’s end to 
week’s end — and they all say so — they say it ’ud be noth¬ 
ing but right, only you’re so turned against Wakem.” 

“ Mother,” said Tom, severely, “ this is not the time to 
talk about that.” 

“ Let her be,” said Mr. Tulliver. “ Say what you mean, 
Bessy.” 

“ Why, now the mill and the land’s all Wakem’s, and he’s 
got everything in his hands, what’s the use o’ setting your 
face against him, when he says you may stay here, and 
speaks as fair as can be, and says you may manage the busi¬ 
ness, and have thirty shilling a week, and a horse to ride 
about to market ? And where have we got to put our heads ? 
We must go into one o’ the cottages in the village, — and me 
and my children brought down to that, — and all because 
you must set your mind against folks till there’s no turning 
you.” 

Mr. Tulliver had sunk back in his chair, trembling. 


284 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


“ You may do as you like wi’ me, Bessy,” he said, in a low 
voice; “ I’ve been the bringing of you to poverty — this 
world’s too many for me— I’m nought but a bankrupt; it’s 
no use standing up for anything now.” 

“ Father,” said Tom, “ I don’t agree with my mother or 
my uncles, and I don’t think you ought to submit to be un¬ 
der Wakem. I get a pound a week now, and you can find 
something else to do when you get well.” 

“ Say no more, Tom, say no more; I’ve had enough for 
this day. Give me a kiss, Bessy, and let us bear one an¬ 
other no ill will; we shall never be young again — this 
world’s been too many for me.” 



CHAPTER IX 

AN ITEM ADDED TO THE FAMILY REGISTER 

T HAT first moment of renunciation and submission was 
followed by days of violent struggle in the miller’s 
mind, as the gradual access of bodily strength brought with 
it increasing ability to embrace in one view all the conflict¬ 
ing conditions under which he found himself. Feeble limbs 
easily resign themselves to be tethered, and when we are 



THE DOWNFALL 


285 


subdued by sickness it seems possible to us to fulfil pledges 
which the old vigor comes back and breaks. There were 
times when poor Tulliver thought the fulfilment of his 
promise to Bessy was something quite too hard for human 
nature; he had promised her without knowing what she was 
going to say, — she might as well have asked him to carry 
a ton weight on his back. But again, there were many feel¬ 
ings arguing on her side, besides the sense that life had been 
made hard to her by having married him. He saw a possi¬ 
bility, by much pinching, of saving money out of his salary 
toward paying a second dividend to his creditors, and it 
would not be easy elsewhere to get a situation such as he 
could fill. He had led an easy life, ordering much and 
working little, and had no aptitude for any new business. 
He must perhaps take to day-labor, and his wife must have 
help from her sisters, — a prospect doubly bitter to him, 
now they had let all Bessy’s precious things be sold, prob¬ 
ably because they liked to set her against him, by making 
her feel that he had brought her to that pass. He listened 
to their admonitory talk, when they came to urge on him 
what he was bound to do for poor Bessy’s sake, with averted 
eyes, that every now and then flashed on them furtively 
when their backs were turned. Nothing but the dread of 
needing their help could have made it an easier alternative 
to take their advice. 

But the strongest influence of all was the love of the old 
premises where he had run about when he was a boy, just 
as Tom had done after him. The Tullivers had lived on this 
spot for generations, and he had sat listening on a low stool 
on winter evenings while his father talked of the old half- 
timbered mill that had been there before the last great floods 
which damaged it so that his grandfather pulled it down and 
built the new one. It was when he got able to walk about 
and look at all the old objects that he felt the strain of his 
clinging affection for the old home as part of his life, part 
of himself. He couldn’t bear to think of himself living on 
any other spot than this, where he knew the sound of every 
gate door, and felt that the shape and color of every roof 


286 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


and weather-stain and broken hillock was good, because his 
growing senses had been fed on them. Our instructed va¬ 
grancy, which has hardly time to linger by the hedgerows, 
but runs away early to the tropics, and is at home with 
palms and banyans, — which is nourished on books of travel 
and stretches the theatre of its imagination to the Zambesi, 

— can hardly get a dim notion of what an old-fashioned 
man like Tulliver felt for this spot, where all his memories 
centred, and where life seemed like a familiar smooth- 
handled tool that the fingers clutch with loving ease. And 
just now he was living in that freshened memory of the far- 
off time which comes to us in the passive hours of recovery 
from sickness. 

“ Ay, Luke,” he said one afternoon, as he stood looking 
over the orchard gate, “ I remember the day they planted 
those apple-trees. My father was a huge man for planting, 

— it was like a merry-making to him to get a cart full o’ 
young trees; and I used to stand i’ the cold with him, and 
follow him about like a dog.” 

Then he turned round and, leaning against the gate-post, 
looked at the opposite buildings. 

“ The old mill ’ud miss me, I think, Luke. There’s a story 
as when the mill changes hands, the river’s angry; I’ve 
heard my father say it many a time. There’s no telling 
whether there mayn’t be summat in the story, for this is a 
puzzling world, and - Old Harry’s got a finger in it — it’s 
been too many for me, I know.” 

“ Ay, sir,” said Luke, with soothing sympathy, “ what 
wi’ the rust on the wheat, an’ the firin’ o’ the ricks an’ that, 
as I’ve seen i’ my time, — things often looks comical; there’s 
the bacon fat wi’ our last pig run away like butter, — it 
leaves nought but a scratchin’.” 

“ It’s just as if it was yesterday, now,” Mr. Tulliver went 
on, “ when my father began the malting. I remember, the 
day they finished the malt-house, I thought summat great 
was to come of it; for we’d a plum-pudding that day and 
a bit of a feast, and I said to my mother, — she was a fine 
dark-eyed woman, my mother was, — the little wench ’ull 


THE DOWNFALL 


287 


be as like her as two peas.” Here Mr. Tulliver put his 
stick between his legs, and took out his snuff-box, for the 
greater enjoyment of this anecdote, which dropped from 
him in fragments, as if he every other moment lost narra¬ 
tion in vision. “I was a little chap no higher much than 
my mother’s knee, — she was sore fond of us children, Gritty 
and me, — and so I said to her, * Mother,’ I said, * shall we 
have plum-pudding every day because o’ the malt-house? ’ 
She used to tell me o’ that till her dying day. She was but 
a young woman when she died, my mother was. But it’s 
forty good year since they finished the malt-house, and it 
isn’t many days out of ’em all as I haven’t looked out into 
the yard there, the first thing in the morning, — all weathers, 
from year’s end to year’s end. I should go off my head in 
a new place. I should be like as if I’d lost my way. It’s 
all hard, whichever way I look at it, — the harness ’ull gall 
me, but it ’ud be summat to draw along the old road, in¬ 
stead of a new un.” 

“ Ay, sir,” said Luke, “ you’d be a deal better here nor in 
some new place. I can’t abide new places mysen: things is 
allays awk’ard,— narrow-wheeled waggins, belike, and the 
stiles all another sort, an’ oat-cake i’ some places, tow’rt 
th’ head o’ the Floss, there. It’s poor work, changing your 
country-side.” 

“ But I doubt, Luke, they’ll be for getting rid o’ Ben, and 
making you do with a lad; and I must help a bit wi’ the 
mill. You’ll have a worse place.” 

“ Ne’er mind, sir,” said Luke, “ I sha’n’t plague mysen. 
I’n been wi’ you twenty ysar, an’ you can’t get twenty year 
wi’ whistlin’ for ’em, no more nor you can make the trees 
grow: you mun wait till God A’mighty sends ’em. I can’t 
abide new victual nor new faces, I can’t, — you niver know 
but what they’ll gripe you.” 

The walk was finished in silence after this, for Luke had 
disburdened himself of thoughts to an extent that left his 
conversational resources quite barren, and Mr. Tulliver had 
relapsed from his recollections into a painful meditation on 
the choice of hardships before him. Maggie noticed that he 


288 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


was unusually absent that evening at tea; and afterward 
he sat leaning forward in his chair, looking at the ground, 
moving his lips, and shaking his head from time to time. 
Then he looked hard at Mrs. Tulliver, who was knitting op¬ 
posite him, then at Maggie, who, as she bent over her sew¬ 
ing, was intensely conscious of some drama going forward in 
her father’s mind. Suddenly he took up the poker and broke 
the large coal fiercely. 

“ Dear heart, Mr. Tulliver, what can you be thinking of? ” 
said his wife, looking up in alarm; “ it’s very wasteful, break¬ 
ing the coal, and we’ve got hardly any large coal left, and I 
don’t know where the rest is to come from.” 

“ I don’t think you’re quite so well to-night, are you, 
father?” said Maggie; “you seem uneasy.” 

“ Why, how is it Tom doesn’t come? ” said Mr. Tulliver, 
impatiently. 

“ Dear heart! is it time? I must go and get his supper,” 
said Mrs. Tulliver, laying down her knitting, and leaving 
the room. 

“ It’s nigh upon half-past eight,” said Mr. Tulliver. “ He’ll 
be here soon. Go, go and get the big Bible, and open it at 
the beginning, where everything’s set down. And get the 
pen and ink.” 

Maggie obeyed, wondering; but her father gave no fur¬ 
ther orders, and only sat listening for Tom’s footfall on the 
gravel, apparently irritated by the wind, which had risen, 
and was roaring so as to drown all other sounds. There 
was a strange light in his eyes that rather frightened 
Maggie; she began to wish that Tom would come, too. 

“ There he is, then,” said Mr. Tulliver, in an excited way, 
when the knock came at last. Maggie went to open the 
door, but her mother came out of the kitchen hurriedly, 
saying, “ Stop a bit, Maggie; I’ll open it.” 

Mrs. Tulliver had begun to be a little frightened at her 
boy, but she was jealous of every office others did for him. 

“ Your supper’s ready by the kitchen-fire, my boy,” she 
said, as he took off his hat and coat. “ You shall have it by 
yourself, just as you like, and I won’t speak to you.” 


THE DOWNFALL 289 

“ I think my father wants Tom, mother/’ said Maggie; 
“ he must come into the parlor first.” 

Tom entered with his usual saddened evening face, but 
his eyes fell immediately on the open Bible and the ink- 
stand, and he glanced with a look of anxious surprise at his 
father, who was saying, — 

“ Come, come, you’re late; I want you.” 

“ Is there anything the matter, father ? ” said Tom. 

“ You sit down, all of you,” said Mr. Tulliver, peremp¬ 
torily. “ And, Tom, sit down here; I’ve got something for 
you to write i’ the Bible.” 

They all three sat down, looking at him. He began to 
speak slowly, looking first at his wife. 

“ I’ve made up my mind, Bessy, and I’ll be as good as my 
word to you. There’ll be the same grave made for us to lie 
down in, and we mustn’t be bearing one another ill-will. I’ll 
stop in the old place, and I’ll serve under Wakem, and I’ll 
serve him like an honest man; there’s no Tulliver but what’s 
honest, mind that, Tom,” — here his voice rose, — “ they’ll 
have it to throw up against me as I paid a dividend, but it 
wasn’t my fault; it was because there’s raskills in the world. 
They’ve been too many for me and I must give in. I’ll put 
my neck in harness, — for you’ve a right to say as I’ve 
brought you into trouble, Bessy, — and I’ll serve him as 
honest as if he was no raskill; I’m an honest man, though 
I shall never hold my head up no more. I’m a tree as is 
broke — a tree as is broke.” 

He paused, and looked on the ground.' Then suddenly 
raising his head, he said, in a louder yet deeper tone: 

“ But I won’t forgive him! I know what they say, he 
never meant me any harm. That’s the way Old Harry 
props up the raskills. He’s been at the bottom of every¬ 
thing; but he’s a fine gentleman, — I know, I know. I 
shouldn’t ha’ gone to law, they say. But who made it so as 
there was no arbitratin’, and no justice to be got? It sig¬ 
nifies nothing to him, I know that; he’s one o’ them fine 
gentlemen as get money by doing business for poorer folks, 
and when he’s made beggars of ’em he’ll give ’em charity. 


290 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


I won’t forgive him! I wish he might be punished with 
shame till his own son ’ud likq to forget him. I wish he 
may do summat as they’d make him work at the treadmill! 
But he won’t, — he’s too big a raskill to let the law lay hold 
on him. And you mind this, Tom, — you never forgive him 
neither, if you mean to be my son. There’ll maybe come a 
time when you may make him feel; it’ll never come to me; 
I’n got my head under the yoke. Now write — write it i’ 
the Bible.” 

“Oh, father, what?” said Maggie, sinking down by his 
knee, pale and trembling. “ It’s wicked to curse and bear 
malice.” 

“ It isn’t wicked, I tell you,” said her father, fiercely. 
“ It’s wicked as the raskills should prosper; it’s the Devil’s 
doing. Do as I tell you, Tom. Write.” 

“ What am I to write ? ” said Tom, with gloomy sub¬ 
mission. 

“ Write as your father, Edward Tulliver, took service un¬ 
der John Wakem, the man as had helped to ruin him, be¬ 
cause I’d promised my wife to make her what amends I 
could for her trouble, and because I wanted to die in th’ 
old place where I was born and my father was born. Put 
that i’ the right words — you know how — and then write, 
as I don’t forgive Wakem for all that; and for all I’ll serve 
him honest, I wish evil may befall him. Write that.” 

There was a dead silence as Tom’s pen moved along the 
paper; Mrs. Tulliver looked scared; and Maggie trembled 
like a leaf. 

“ Now let me hear what you’ve wrote,” said Mr. Tulliver. 
Tom read aloud slowly. 

“Now write — write as you’ll remember what Wakem’s 
done to your father, and you’ll make him and his feel it, if 
ever the day comes. And sign your name Thomas Tulliver.” 

“ Oh no, father, dear father! ” said Maggie, almost 
choked with fear. “ You shouldn’t make Tom write that.” 

“ Be quiet, Maggie! ” said Tom. “ I shall write it.” 



BOOK IV —THE VALLEY OF 
HUMILIATION 

CHAPTER I 

A VARIATION OF PROTESTANTISM UNKNOWN TO 
BOSSUET 

J OURNEYING down the Rhone on a summer’s day, you 
have perhaps felt the sunshine made dreary by those 
ruined villages which stud the banks in certain parts of its 
course, telling how the swift river once rose, like an angry, 
destroying god, sweeping down the feeble generations whose 
breath is in their nostrils, and making their dwellings a 
desolation. Strange contrast, you may have thought, be¬ 
tween the effect produced on us by these dismal remnants 
of commonplace houses, which in their best days were but 
the sign of a sordid life, belonging in all its details to our 
own vulgar era, and the effect produced by those ruins on 
the castled Rhine, which have crumbled and mellowed into 
such harmony with the green and rocky steeps that they 
seem to have a natural fitness, like the mountain-pine; nay, 
even in the day when they were built they must have had 
this fitness, as if they had been raised by an earth-born 
race, who had inherited from their mighty parent a sub¬ 
lime instinct of form. And that was a day of romance! 

291 


292 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


If those robber-barons were somewhat grim and drunken 
ogres, they had a certain grandeur of the wild beast in 
them, — they were forest boars with tusks, tearing and 
rending, not the ordinary domestic grunter; they repre¬ 
sented the demon forces forever in collision with beauty, 
virtue, and the gentle uses of life; they made a fine contrast 
in the picture with the wandering minstrel, the soft-lipped 
princess, the pious recluse, and the timid Israelite. That 
was a time of color, when the sunlight fell on glancing steel 
and floating banners; a time of adventure and fierce 
struggle, — nay, of living, religious art and religious enthu¬ 
siasm; for were not cathedrals built in those days, and did 
not great emperors leave their Western palaces to die be¬ 
fore the infidel strongholds in the sacred East? Therefore 
it is that these Rhine castles thrill me with a sense of 
poetry; they belong to the grand historic life of humanity, 
and raise up for me the vision of an echo. But these dead- 
tinted, hollow-eyed, angular skeletons of villages on the 
Rhone oppress me with the feeling that human life — very 
much of it — is a narrow, ugly, grovelling existence, which 
even calamity does not elevate, but rather tends to exhibit 
in all its bare vulgarity of conception; and I have a cruel 
conviction that the lives these ruins are the traces of were 
part of a gross sum of obscure vitality, that will be swept 
into the same oblivion with the generations of ants and 
beavers. 

Perhaps something akin to this oppressive feeling may 
have weighed upon you in watching this old-fashioned fam¬ 
ily life on the banks of the Floss, which even sorrow hardly 
suffices to lift above the level of the tragi-comic. It is a 
sordid life, you say, this of the Tullivers and Dodsons, 
irradiated by no sublime principles, no romantic visions, no 
active, self-renouncing faith; moved by none of those wild, 
uncontrollable passions which create the dark shadows of 
misery and crime; without that primitive, rough simplicity 
of wants, that hard, submissive, ill-paid toil, that childlike 
spelling-out of what nature has written, which gives its 
poetry to peasant life. Here one has conventional worldly 


THE VALLEY OF HUMILIATION 


293 


notions and habits without instruction and without polish, 
surely the most prosaic form of human life; proud respec¬ 
tability in a gig of unfashionable build; worldliness with¬ 
out side-dishes. Observing these people narrowly, even 
when the iron hand of misfortune has shaken them from 
their unquestioning hold on the world, one sees little trace 
of religion, still less of a distinctively Christian creed. Their 
belief in the Unseen, so far as it manifests itself at all, 
seems to be rather a pagan kind; their moral notions, though \ 
held with strong tenacity, seem to have no standard beyond 1 
hereditary custom. You could not live among such people; 
you are stifled for want of an outlet toward something beau¬ 
tiful, great, or noble; you are irritated with these dull men 
and women, as a kind of population out of keeping with the 
earth on which they live, — with this rich plain where the 
great river flows forever onward, and links the small pulse 
of the old English town with the beatings of the world’s 
mighty heart. A vigorous superstition, that lashes its gods 
or lashes its own back, seems to be more congruous with the 
mystery of the human lot, than the mental condition of 
these emmet-like Dodsons and Tullivers. 

I share with you this sense of oppressive narrowness; but 
it is necessary that we should feel it, if we (fere to under¬ 
stand how it acted on the lives of Tom and Maggie, — how 
it has acted on young natures in many generations, that in 
the onward tendency of human things have risen above the 
mental level of the generation before them, to which they 
have been nevertheless tied by the strongest fibres of their 
hearts. The suffering, whether of martyr or victim, which 
belongs to every historical advance of mankind, is repre¬ 
sented in this way in every town, and by hundreds of ob¬ 
scure hearths; and we need not shrink from this comparison 
of small things with great; for does not science tell us that 
its highest striving is after the ascertainment of a unity 
which shall bind the smallest things with the greatest? In 
natural science, I have understood, there is nothing petty 
to the mind that has a large vision of relations, and to 
which every single object suggests a vast sum of condi- 


294 MILL ON THE FLOSS 

tions. It is surely the same with the observation of human 
life. 

Certainly the religious and moral ideas of the Dodsons 
and Tullivers were of too specific a kind to be arrived at 
deductively, from the statement that they were part of the 
Protestant population of Great Britain. Their theory of 
life had its core of soundness, as all theories must have on 
which decent and prosperous families have been reared and 
have flourished; but it had the very slightest tincture of 
theology. 

If, in the maiden days of the Dodson sisters, their 
Bibles opened more easily at some parts than others, it 
was because of dried tulip-petals, which had been distrib¬ 
uted quite impartially, without preference for the histori¬ 
cal, devotional, or doctrinal. Their religion was of a sim¬ 
ple, semi-pagan kind, but there was no heresy in it, — if 
heresy properly means choice, — for they didn’t know there 
was any other religion, except that of chapel-goers, which 
appeared to run in families, like asthma. How should they 
know? The vicar of their pleasant rural parish was not a 
controversialist, but a good hand at whist, and one who 
had a joke always ready for a blooming female parishioner. 
The religion of the Dodsons consisted in revering whatever 
was customary and respectable : it was necessary to be bap¬ 
tized, else one could not be buried in the church-yard, and 
to take the sacrament before death, as a security against 
more dimly understood perils; but it was of equal neces¬ 
sity to have the proper pall-bearers and well-cured hams at 
one’s funeral, and to leave an unimpeachable will. A Dod¬ 
son would not be taxed with the omission of anything that 
was becoming, or that belonged to that eternal fitness of 
things which was plainly indicated in the practice of the 
most substantial parishioners, and in the family traditions, 
— such as obedience to parents, faithfulness to kindred, in¬ 
dustry, rigid honesty, thrift, the thorough scouring of 
wooden and copper utensils, the hoarding of coins likely to 
disappear from the currency, the production of first-rate 
commodities for the market, and the general preference of 


THE VALLEY OF HUMILIATION 


295 


whatever was home-made. The Dodsons were a very proud 
race, and their pride lay in the utter frustration of all de¬ 
sire to tax them with a breach of traditional duty or pro¬ 
priety. 

A wholesome pride in many respects, since it identified 
honor with perfect integrity, thoroughness of work, and 
faithfulness to admitted rules; and society owes some 
worthy qualities in many of her members to mothers of 
the Dodson class, who made their butter and their fromenty 
well, and would have felt disgraced to make it otherwise. 
To be honest and poor was never a Dodson motto, still less 
to seem rich though being poor; rather, the family badge 
was to be honest and rich, and not only rich, but richer than 
was supposed. To live respected, and have the proper 
bearers at your funeral, was an achievement of the ends of 
existence that would be entirely nullified if, on the reading 
of your will, you sank in the opinion of your fellow-men, 
either by turning out to be poorer than they expected, or 
by leaving your money in a capricious manner, without 
strict regard to degrees of kin. The right thing must al¬ 
ways be done toward kindred. The right thing was to cor¬ 
rect them severely, if they were other than a credit to the 
family, but still not to alienate from them the smallest right¬ 
ful share in the family shoe-buckles and other property. A 
conspicuous quality in the Dodson character was its genu¬ 
ineness; its vices and virtues alike were phases of a proud, 
honest egoism, which had a hearty dislike to whatever made 
against its own credit and interest, and would be frankly 
hard of speech to inconvenient “ kin,” but would never for¬ 
sake or ignore them, — would not let them want bread, but 
only require them to eat it with bitter herbs. 

The same sort of traditional belief ran in the Tulliver 
veins, but it was carried in richer blood, having elements of 
generous imprudence, warm affection, and hot-tempered 
rashness. Mr. Tulliver’s grandfather had been heard to 
say that he was descended from one Ralph Tulliver, a won¬ 
derfully clever fellow, who had ruined himself. It is likely 
enough that the clever Ralph was a high liver, rode spirited 


296 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


horses, and was very decidedly of his own opinion. On the 
other hand, nobody had even heard of a Dodson who had 
ruined himself; it was not the way of that family. 

If such were the views of life on which the Dodsons and 
Tullivers had been reared in the praiseworthy past of Pitt 
and high prices, you will infer from what you already know 
concerning the state of society in St. Ogg’s, that there had 
been no highly modifying influence to act on them in their 
maturer life. It was still possible for people to hold many 
pagan ideas, and believe themselves good church-people, 
notwithstanding; so we need hardly feel any surprise at the 
fact that Mr. Tulliver, though a regular church-goer, re¬ 
corded his vindictiveness on the fly-leaf of his Bible. It was 
not that any harm could be said concerning the vicar of 
that charming rural parish to which Dorlcote Mill belonged; 
he was a man of excellent family, an irreproachable bache¬ 
lor, of elegant pursuits, — had taken honors, and held a 
fellowship. Mr. Tulliver regarded him with dutiful respect, 
as he did everything else belonging to the church-service; 
but he considered that church was one thing and common- 
sense another, and he wanted nobody to tell him what 
common-sense was. Certain seeds which are required to 
find a nidus for themselves under unfavorable circumstances, 
have been supplied by nature with an apparatus of hooks, 
so that they will get a hold on very unreceptive surfaces. 
The spiritual seed which had been scattered over Mr. Tulli¬ 
ver had apparently been destitute of any corresponding pro¬ 
vision, and had slipped off to the winds again, from a total 
absence of hooks. 


CHAPTER II 

THE TORN NEST IS PIERCED BY THE THORNS 

T HERE is something sustaining in the very agitation that 
accompanies the first shocks of trouble, just as an 
acute pain is often a stimulus, and produces an excitement 


THE VALLEY OF HUMILIATION 


297 


which is transient strength. It is in the slow, changed life 
that follows; in the time when sorrow has become stale, and 
has no longer an emotive intensity that counteracts its pain; 
in the time when day follows day in dull unexpectant same¬ 
ness, and trial is a dreary routine, — it is then that despair 
threatens; it is then that the peremptory hunger of the soul 
is felt, and eye and ear are strained after some unlearned 
secret of our existence, which shall give to endurance the 
nature of satisfaction. 

This time of utmost need was come to Maggie, with her 
short span of 'thirteen years. To the usual precocity of the 
girl, she added that early experience of struggle, of conflict 
between the inward impulse and outward fact, which is the 
lot of every imaginative and passionate nature; and the 
years since she hammered the nails into her wooden Fetish 
among the worm-eaten shelves of the attic had been filled 
with so eager a life in the triple world of Reality, Books, 
and Waking Dreams, that Maggie was strangely old for her 
years in everything except in her entire want of that pru¬ 
dence and self-command which were the qualities that made 
Tom manly in the midst of his intellectual boyishness. And 
now her lot was beginning to have a still, sad monotony, 
which threw her more than ever on her inward self. Her 
father was able to attend to business again, his affairs were 
settled, and he was acting as Wakem’s manager on the old 
spot. 

Tom went to and fro every morning and evening, and 
became more and more silent in the short intervals at home; 
what was there to say? One day was like another; and 
Tom’s interest in life, driven back and crushed on every 
other side, was concentrating itself into the one channel of 
ambitious resistance to misfortune. The peculiarities of his 
father and mother were very irksome to him, now they were 
laid bare of all the softening accompaniments of an easy, 
prosperous home; for Tom had very clear, prosaic eyes, not 
apt to be dimmed by mists of feeling or imagination. Poor 
Mrs. Tulliver, it seemed, would never recover her old self, 
her placid household activity; how could she? The objects 


298 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


among which her mind had moved complacently were all 
gone, — all the little hopes and schemes and speculations, 
all the pleasant little cares about her treasures which had 
made the world quite comprehensible to her for a quarter of 
a century, since she had made her first purchase of the 
sugar-tongs, had been suddenly snatched away from her, 
and she remained bewildered in this empty life. Why that 
should have happened to her which had not happened to 
other women remained an insoluble question by which she 
expressed her perpetual ruminating comparison of the past 
with the present. It was piteous to see the comely woman 
getting thinner and more worn under a bodily as well as 
mental restlessness, which made her often wander about the 
empty house after her work was done, until Maggie, becom¬ 
ing alarmed about her, would seek her, and bring her down 
by telling her how it vexed Tom that she was injuring her 
health by never sitting down and resting herself. Yet 
amidst this helpless imbecility there was a touching trait of 
humble, self-devoting maternity, which made Maggie feel 
tenderly toward her poor mother amidst all the little wear¬ 
ing griefs caused by her mental feebleness. She would let 
Maggie do none of the work that was heaviest and most 
soiling to the hands, and was quite peevish when Maggie 
attempted to relieve her from her grate-brushing and scour¬ 
ing: “ Let it alone, my dear; your hands ’ull get as hard as 
hard,” she would say; “ it’s your mother’s place to do that. 
I can’t do the sewing — my eyes fail me.” And she would 
still brush and carefully tend Maggie’s hair, which she had 
become reconciled to, in spite of its refusal to curl, now it 
was so long and massy. Maggie was not her pet child, and, 
in general, would have been much better if she had been 
quite different; yet the womanly heart, so bruised in its 
small personal desires, found a future to rest on in the life 
of this young thing, and the mother pleased herself with 
wearing out her own hands to save the hands that had so 
much more life in them. 

But the constant presence of her mother’s regretful be¬ 
wilderment was less painful to Maggie than that of her 


THE VALLEY OF HUMILIATION 


299 


father’s sullen, incommunicative depression. As long as the 
paralysis was upon him, and it seemed as if he might always 
be in a childlike condition of dependence, — as long as he 
was still only half awakened to his trouble, — Maggie had 
felt the strong tide of pitying love almost as an inspiration, 
a new power, that would make the most difficult life easy for 
his sake; but now, instead of childlike dependence, there 
had come a taciturn, hard concentration of purpose, in 
strange contrast with his old vehement communicativeness 
and high spirit; and this lasted from day to day, and from 
week to week, the dull eye never brightening with any 
eagerness or any joy. It is something cruelly incomprehen¬ 
sible to youthful natures, this sombre sameness in middle- 
aged and elderly people, whose life has resulted in disap¬ 
pointment and discontent, to whose faces a smile becomes 
so strange that the sad lines all about the lips and brow 
seem to take no notice of it, and it hurries away again for 
want of a welcome. “ Why will they not kindle up and be 
glad sometimes ? ” thinks young elasticity. “ It would be 
so easy if they only liked to do it.” And these leaden clouds 
that never part are apt to create impatience even in the 
filial affection that streams forth in nothing but tenderness 
and pity in the time of more obvious affliction. 

Mr. Tulliver lingered nowhere away from home; he hur¬ 
ried away from market, he refused all invitations to stay 
and chat, as in old times, in the houses where he called 
on business. He could not be reconciled with his lot. 
There was no attitude in which his pride did not feel its 
bruises; and in all behavior toward him, whether kind or 
cold, he detected an allusion to the change in his circum¬ 
stances. Even the days on which Wakem came to ride 
round the land and inquire into the business were not so 
black to him as those market-days on which he had met 
several creditors who had accepted a composition from him. 
To save something toward the repayment of those creditors 
was the object toward which he was now bending all his 
thoughts and efforts; and under the influence of this all- 
compelling demand of his nature, the somewhat profuse 


300 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


man, who hated to be stinted or to stint any one else in his 
own house, was gradually metamorphosed into the keen-eyed 
grudger of morsels. Mrs. Tulliver could not economize 
enough to satisfy him, in their food and firing; and he 
would eat nothing himself but what was of the coarsest 
quality. Tom, though depressed and strongly repelled by 
his father’s sullenness, and the dreariness of home, entered 
thoroughly into his father’s feelings about paying the credi¬ 
tors; and the poor lad brought his first quarter’s money, 
with a delicious sense of achievement, and gave it to his 
father to put into the tin box which held the savings. The 
little store of sovereigns in the tin box seemed to be the only 
sight that brought a faint beam of pleasure into the miller’s 
eyes, — faint and transient, for it was soon dispelled by the 
thought that the time would be long — perhaps longer than 
his life — before the narrow savings could remove the hate¬ 
ful incubus of debt. A deficit of more than five hundred 
pounds, with the accumulating interest, seemed a deep pit 
to fill with the Savings from thirty shillings a week, even 
when Tom’s probable savings were to be added. On this 
one point there was entire community of feeling in the four 
widely differing beings who sat round the dying fire of 
sticks, which made a cheap warmth for them on the verge 
of bedtime. Mrs. Tulliver carried the proud integrity of 
the Dodsons in her blood, and had been brought up to think 
that to wrong people of their money, which was another 
phrase for debt, was a sort of moral pillory; it would have 
been wickedness, to her mind, to have run counter to her 
husband’s desire to “ do the right thing,” and retrieve his 
name. She had a confused, dreamy notion that, if the credi¬ 
tors were all paid, her plate and linen ought to come back to 
her; but she had an inbred perception that while people 
owed money they were unable to pay, they couldn’t rightly 
call anything their own. She murmured a little that Mr. 
Tulliver so peremptorily refused to receive anything in re¬ 
payment from Mr. and Mrs. Moss; but to all his require¬ 
ments of household economy she was submissive to the point 
of denying herself the cheapest indulgences of mere flavor; 


THE VALLEY OF HUMILIATION 


301 


her only rebellion was to smuggle into the kitchen something 
that would make rather a better supper than usual for Tom. 

These narrow notions about debt, held by the old- 
fashioned Tullivers, may perhaps excite a smile on the faces 
of many readers in these days of wide commercial views and 
wide philosophy, according to which everything rights itself 
without any trouble of ours. The fact that my tradesman 
is out of pocket by me is to be looked at through the serene 
certainty that somebody else's tradesman is in pocket by 
somebody else; and since there must be bad debts in the 
world, why, it is mere egoism not to like that we in particu¬ 
lar should make them instead of our fellow-citizens. I am 
telling the history of very simple people, who had never had 
any illuminating doubts as to personal integrity and honor. 

Under all this grim melancholy and narrowing concentra¬ 
tion of desire, Mr. Tulliver retained the feeling toward his 
“ little wench ” which made her presence a need to him, 
though it would not suffice to cheer him. She was still the 
desire of his eyes; but the sweet spring of fatherly love was 
now mingled with bitterness, like everything else. When 
Maggie laid down her work at night, it was her habit ito 
get a low stool and sit by her father's knee, leaning her 
cheek against it. How she wished he would stroke her 
head, or give some sign that he was soothed by the sense 
that he had a daughter who loved him! But now she got 
no answer to her little caresses, either from her father or 
from Tom, — the two idols of her life. Tom was weary 
and abstracted in the short intervals when he was at home, 
and her father was bitterly preoccupied with the thought 
that the girl was growing up, was shooting up into a woman; 
and how was she to do well in life? She had a poor chance 
for marrying, down in the world as they were. And he 
hated the thought of her marrying poorly, as her aunt Gritty 
had done; that would be a thing to make him turn in his 
grave, — the little wench so pulled down by children and 
toil, as her aunt Moss was. When uncultured minds, con¬ 
fined to a narrow range of personal experience, are under 
the pressure of continued misfortune, their inward life is 


302 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


apt to become a perpetually repeated round of sad and 
bitter thoughts; the same words, the same scenes, are re¬ 
volved over and over again, the same mood accompanies 
them; the end of the year finds them as much what they 
were at the beginning as if they were machines set to a 
recurrent series of movements. 

The sameness of the days was broken by few visitors. 
]Jncles and aunts paid only short visits now; of course, they 
could not stay to meals, and the constraint caused by Mr. 
Tulliver’s savage silence, which seemed to add to the hollow 
resonance of the bare, uncarpeted room when the aunts 
were talking, heightened the unpleasantness of these fam¬ 
ily visits on all sides, and tended to make them rare. As for 
other acquaintances, there is a chill air surrounding those 
who are down in the world, and people are glad to get away 
from them, as from a cold room; human beings, mere men 
and women, without furniture, without anything to offer 
you, who have ceased to count as anybody, present an em¬ 
barrassing negation of reasons for wishing to see them, or 
of subjects on which to converse with them. At that distant 
day, there was a dreary isolation in the civilized Christian 
society of these realms for families that had dropped below 
their original level, unless they belonged to a sectarian 
church, which gets some warmth of brotherhood by walling 
in the sacred fire. 



CHAPTER III 

A VOICE FROM THE PAST 

O NE afternoon, when the chestnuts were coming into 
flower, Maggie had brought her chair outside the front 
door, and was seated there with a book on her knees. Her 
dark eyes had wandered from the book, but they did not 
seem to be enjoying the sunshine which pierced the screen 
of jasmine on the projecting porch at her right, and threw 
leafy shadows on her pale round cheek; they seemed rather 
to be searching for something that was not disclosed by the 
sunshine. It had been a more miserable day than usual; 
her father, after a visit of Wakem’s, had had a paroxysm 
of rage, in which for some trifling fault he had beaten the 
boy who served in the mill. Once before, since his illness, 
he had had a similar paroxysm, in which he had beaten his 
horse, and the scene had left a lasting terror in Maggie’s 
mind. The thought had risen, that some time or other he 
might beat her mother if she happened to speak in her 
feeble way at the wrong moment. The keenest of all dread 
with her was lest her father should add to his present mis¬ 
fortune the wretchedness of doing something irretrievably 
disgraceful. The battered school-book of Tom’s which she 
held on her knees could give her no fortitude under the 
303 







304 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


pressure of that dread; and again and again her eyes had 
filled with tears, as they wandered vaguely, seeing neither 
the chestnut-trees, nor the distant horizon, but only future 
scenes of home-sorrow. 

Suddenly she was roused by the sound of the opening 
gate and of footsteps on the gravel. It was not Tom 
who was entering, but a man in a sealskin cap and a 
blue plush waistcoat, carrying a pack on his back, and fol¬ 
lowed closely by a bull-terrier of brindled coat and defiant 
aspect. 

“ Oh, Bob, it’s you! ” said Maggie, starting up with a 
smile of pleased recognition, for there had been no abun¬ 
dance of kind acts to efface the recollection of Bob’s gener¬ 
osity; “ I’m so glad to see you.” 

“ Thank you, Miss,” said Bob, lifting his cap and showing 
a delighted face, but immediately relieving himself of some 
accompanying embarrassment by looking down at his dog, 
and saying in a tone of disgust, “ Get out wi’ you, you thun¬ 
derin’ sawney! ” 

“ My brother is not at home yet, Bob,” said Maggie; “ he 
is always at St. Ogg’s in the daytime.” 

“ Well, Miss,” said Bob, “ I should be glad to see Mr. Tom, 
but that isn’t just what I’m come for, — look here! ” 

Bob was in the act of depositing his pack on the door¬ 
step, and with it a row of small books fastened together with 
string. Apparently, however, they were not the object to 
which he wished to call Maggie’s attention, but rather some¬ 
thing which he carried under his arm, wrapped in a red 
handkerchief. 

“ See here! ” he said again, laying the red parcel on the 
others and unfolding it; “ you won’t think I’m a-makin’ too 
free, Miss, I hope, but I lighted on these books, and I 
thought they might make up to you a bit for them as you’ve 
lost; for a heared you speak o’ picturs, — an’ as for picturs, 
look here! ” 

The opening of the red handkerchief had disclosed a 
superannuated “ Keepsake ” and six or seven numbers of 
a “Portrait Gallery,” in royal octavo; and the emphatic 


THE VALLEY OF HUMILIATION 


305 


request to look referred to a portrait of George the Fourth 
in all the majesty of his depressed cranium and voluminous 
neckcloth. 

“ There’s all sorts o’ genelmen here,” Bob went on, turn¬ 
ing over the leaves with some excitement, “ wi’ all sorts o’ 
noses, — an’ some bald an’ some wi’ wigs, — Parlament 
genelmen, I reckon. An’ here,” he added, opening the 
“ Keepsake,” — “ here’s ladies for you, some wi’ curly hair 
and some wi’ smooth, an’ some a-smiling wi’ their heads o’ 
one side, an’ some as if they were goin’ to cry, — look here, 
— a-sittin’ on the ground out o’ door, dressed like the ladies 
I’n seen get out o’ the carriages at the balls in th’ Old Hall 
there. My eyes! I wonder what the chaps wear as go 
a-courtin’ ’em! I sot up till the clock was gone twelve last 
night, a-lookin’ at ’em, — I did, — till they stared at me out 
o’ the picturs as if they’d know when I spoke to ’em. But, 
lors! I shouldn’t know what to say to ’em. They’ll be more 
fittin’ company for you, Miss; and the man at the book¬ 
stall, he said they banged iverything for picturs; he said 
they was a fust-rate article.” 

“ And you’ve bought them for me, Bob ? ” said Maggie, 
deeply touched by this simple kindness. “ How very, very 
good of you! But I’m afraid you gave a great deal of money 
for them.” 

“Not me! ” said Bob. “I’d ha’ gev three times the 
money if they’ll make up to you a bit for them as was sold 
away from you, Miss. For I’n niver forgot how you looked 
when, you fretted about the books bein’ gone; it’s stuck by 
me as if it was a pictur hingin’ before me. An’ when I see’d 
the book open upo’ the stall, wi’ the lady lookin’ out of it 
wi’ eyes a bit like your’n when you was frettin’, —- you’ll ex¬ 
cuse my takin’ the liberty, Miss, — I thought I’d make free 
to buy it for you, an’ then I bought the books full o’ genel¬ 
men to match; an’ then ” — here Bob took up the small 
stringed packet of books — “ I thought you might like a 
bit more print as well as the picturs, an’ I got these for a 
sayso, — they’re cram-full o’ print, an’ I thought they’d 
do no harm cornin’ along wi’ these bettermost books. An’ 


306 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


I hope you won’t say me nay, an’ tell me as you won’t have 
’em, like Mr. Tom did wi’ the suvreigns.” 

“ No, indeed, Bob,” said Maggie, “ I’m very thankful to 
you for thinking of me, and being so good to me and Tom. 
I don’t think any one ever did such a kind thing for me be¬ 
fore. I haven’t many friends who care for me.” 

“ Hev a dog, Miss! — they’re better friends nor any Chris¬ 
tian,” said Bob, laying down his pack again, which he had 
taken up with the intention of hurrying away; for he felt 
considerable shyness in talking to a young lass like Maggie, 
though, as he usually said of himself, “ his tongue overrun 
him ” when he began to speak. “ I can’t give you Mumps, 
’cause he’d break his heart to go away from me — eh, 
Mumps, what do you say, you riff-raff? ” (Mumps declined 
to express himself more diffusely than by a single affirmative 
movement of his tail.) “ But I’d get you a pup, Miss, an’ 
welcome.” 

, “ No, thank you, Bob. We have a yard dog, and I mayn’t 
keep a dog of my own.” 

“ Eh, that’s a pity; else there’s a pup, — if you didn’t 
mind about it not being thoroughbred; its mother acts in 
the Punch show, — an uncommon sensible bitch; she means 
more sense wi’ her bark nor half the chaps can put into their 
talk from breakfast to sundown. There’s one chap carries 
pots, — a poor, low trade as any on the road, — he says, 

‘ Why, Toby’s nought but a mongrel; there’s nought to look 
at in her.’ But I says to him, ‘ Why, what are you yoursen 
but a mongrel? There wasn’t much pickin’ o’ your feyther 
an’ mother, to look at you.’ Not but I like a bit o’ breed 
myself, but I can’t abide to see one cur grinnin’ at another. 
I wish you good-evenin’, Miss,” said Bob, abruptly taking 
up his pack again, under the consciousness that his tongue 
was acting in an undisciplined manner. 

“ Won’t you come in the evening some time, and see my 
brother, Bob? ” said Maggie. 

“ Yes, Miss, thank you — another time. You’ll give my 
duty to him, if you please. Eh, he’s a fine growed chap, Mr. 
Tom is; he took to growin’ i’ the legs, an’ I didn’t.” 


THE VALLEY OF HUMILIATION 307 

The pack was down again, now, the hook of the stick hav¬ 
ing somehow gone wrong. 

“ You don’t call Mumps a cur, I suppose? ” said Maggie, 
divining that any interest she showed in Mumps would be 
gratifying to his master. 

“ No, Miss, a fine way off that,” said Bob, with pitying 
smile; “ Mumps is as fine a cross as you’ll see anywhere 
along the Floss, an’ I’n been up it wi’ the barge times enow. 
Why, the gentry stops to look at him; but you won’t catch 
Mumps a-looking at the gentry much, — he minds his own 
business, he does.” 

The expression of Mumps’s face, which seemed to be tol¬ 
erating the superfluous existence of objects in general, was 
strongly confirmatory of this high praise. 

“ He looks dreadfully surly,” said Maggie. “ Would he 
let me pat him ? ” 

“ Ay, that would he, and thank you. He knows his com¬ 
pany, Mumps does. He isn’t a dog as ’ull be caught wi’ 
gingerbread; he’d smell a thief a good deal stronger nor the 
gingerbread, he would. Lors, I talk to him by th’ hour to¬ 
gether, when I’m walking i’ lone places, and if I’n done a 
bit o’ mischief, I allays tell him. I’n got no secrets but what 
Mumps knows ’em. He knows about my big thumb, he 
does.” 

“ Your big thumb — what’s that, Bob? ” said Maggie. 

“ That’s what it is, Miss,” said Bob, quickly, exhibiting a 
singularly broad specimen of that difference between the 
man and the monkey. “ It tells i’ measuring out the flannel, 
you see. I carry flannel, ’cause it’s light for my pack, an’ 
it’s dear stuff, you see, so a big thumb tells. I clap my 
thumb at the end o’ the yard and cut out o’ the hither side 
of it, and the old wcgnen aren’t up to’t.” 

“ But, Bob,” said Maggie, looking serious, “ that’s cheat¬ 
ing; I don’t like to hear you say that.” 

“ Don’t you, Miss?” said Bob, regretfully. “Then I’m 
sorry I said it. But I’m so used to talking to Mumps, an’ 
he doesn’t mind a bit o’ cheating, when it’s them skinflint 
women, as haggle an’ haggle, an’ ’ud like to get their flannel 


308 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


for nothing, an’ ’ud niver ask theirselves how I got my din¬ 
ner out on’t. I niver cheat anybody as doesn’t want to cheat 
me, Miss, — lors, I’m a honest chap, I am; only I must hev 
a bit o’ sport, an’ now I don’t go wi’ th’ ferrets, I’n got no 
varmint to come over but them haggling women. I wish 
you good-evening, Miss.” 

“ Good-by, Bob. Thank you very much for bringing me 
the books. And come again to see Tom.” 

“ Yes, Miss,” said Bob, moving on a few steps; then turn¬ 
ing half round he said, “ I’ll leave off that trick wi’ my big 
thumb, if you don’t think well on me for it, Miss; but it ’ud 
be a pity, it would. I couldn’t find another trick so good, 
— an’ what ’ud be the use o’ havin’ a big thumb?- It might 
as well ha’ been narrow.” 

Maggie, thus exalted into Bob’s directing Madonna, 
laughed in spite of herself; at which her worshipper’s blue 
eyes twinkled too, and under these favoring auspices he 
touched his cap and walked away. 

The days of chivalry are not gone, notwithstanding 
Burke’s grand dirge over them; they live still in that far- 
off worship paid by many a youth and man to the woman 
of whom he never dreams that he shall touch so much as her 
little finger or the hem of her robe. Bob, with the pack on 
his back, had as respectful an adoration for this dark-eyed 
maiden as if he had been a knight in armor, calling aloud 
on her name as he pricked on to the fight. 

That gleam of merriment soon died away from Maggie’s 
face, and perhaps only made the returning gloom deeper by 
contrast. She was too dispirited even to like answering 
questions about Bob’s present of books, and she carried them 
away to her bedroom, laying them down there and seating 
herself on her one stool, without caring to look at them just 
yet. She leaned her cheek against the window-frame, and 
thought that the light-hearted Bob had a lot much happier 
than hers. 

Maggie’s sense of loneliness, and utter privation of joy, 
had deepened with the brightness of advancing spring. All 
the favorite outdoor nooks about home, which seemed to 


THE VALLEY OF HUMILIATION 


309 


have done their part with her parents in nurturing and 
cherishing her, were now mixed up with the home-sadness, 
and gathered no smile from the sunshine. Every affection, 
every delight the poor child had had, was like an aching 
nerve to her. There was no music for her any more, — no 
piano, no harmonized voices, no delicious stringed instru¬ 
ments, with their passionate cries of imprisoned spirits send¬ 
ing a strange vibration through her frame. And of all her 
schooldife there was nothing left her now but her little col¬ 
lection of school-books, which she turned over with a sicken¬ 
ing sense that she knew them all, and they were all barren 
of comfort. Even at school she had often wished for books 
with more in them; everything she learned there seemed 
like the ends of long threads that snapped immediately. 
And now — without the indirect charm of school-emulation 
— Telemaque was mere bran; so were the hard, dry ques¬ 
tions on Christian Doctrine; there was no flavor in them, 
no strength. Sometimes Maggie thought she could have 
been contented with absorbing fancies; if she could have had 
all Scott’s novels and all Byron’s poems! ■— then, perhaps, 
she might have found happiness enough to dull her sensi¬ 
bility to her actual daily life. And yet they were hardly 
what she wanted. She could make dream-worlds of her 
own, but no dream-world'would satisfy her now. She wanted 
some explanation of this hard, real life, — the unhappy- 
looking father, seated at the dull breakfast-table; the child¬ 
ish, bewildered mother; the little sordid tasks that filled the 
hours, or the more oppressive emptiness of weary, joyless 
leisure; the need of some tender, demonstrative love; the 
cruel sense that Tom didn’t mind what she thought or felt, 
and that they were no longer playfellows together; the pri¬ 
vation of all pleasant things that had come to her more than 
to others, — she wanted some key that would enable her to 
understand, and in understanding, to endure, the heavy 
weight that had fallen on her young heart. If she had been 
taught “ real learning and wisdom, such as great men knew,” 
she thought she should have held the secrets of life; if she 
had only books, that she might learn for herself what wise 


310 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


men knew! Saints and martyrs had never interested Mag¬ 
gie so much as sages and poets. 

In one of these meditations it occurred to her that she had 
forgotten Tom’s, school-books, which had been sent home in 
his trunk. But she found the stock unaccountably shrunk 
down to the few old ones which had been well thumbed, — 
the Latin Dictionary and Grammar, a Delectus, a torn 
Eutropius, the well-worn Virgil, Aldrich’s Logic, and the ex¬ 
asperating Euclid. Still, Latin, Euclid, and Logic would 
surely be a considerable step in masculine wisdom, — in that 
knowledge which made men contented, and even glad to live. 
Not that the yearning for effectual wisdom was quite un¬ 
mixed; a certain mirage would now and then rise on the 
desert of the future, in which she seemed to see herself 
honored for her surprising attainments. And so the poor 
child, with her soul’s hunger and her illusions of self-flattery, 
began to nibble at this thick-rinded fruit of the tree of 
knowledge, filling her vacant hours with Latin, geometry, 
and the forms of the syllogism, and feeling a gleam of tri¬ 
umph now and then that her understanding was quite equal 
to these peculiarly masculine studies. For a week or two she 
went on resolutely enough, though with an occasional sink¬ 
ing of heart, as if she had set out toward the Promised Land 
alone, and found it a thirsty, tradkless, uncertain journey. 

In the severity of her early resolution, she would take Al¬ 
drich out into the fields, and then look off her book toward 
the sky, where the lark was twinkling, or to the reeds and 
bushes by the river, from which the water-fowl rustled forth 
on its anxious, awkward flight, — with a startled sense that 
the relation between Aldrich and this living world was ex¬ 
tremely remote for her. The discouragement deepened as 
the days went on, and the eager heart gained faster and 
faster on the patient mind. Somehow, when she sat at the 
window with her book, her eyes would fix themselves blankly 
on the outdoor sunshine; then they would fill with tears, and 
sometimes, if her mother was not in the room, the studies 
would all end in sobbing. She rebelled against her lot, she 
fainted under its loneliness, and fits even of anger and hatred 


THE VALLEY OF HUMILIATION 


311 


toward her father and mother, who were so unlike what she 
would have them to be; toward Tom, who checked her, and 
met her thought or feeling always by some thwarting differ¬ 
ence,— would flow out over her affections and conscience 
like a lava stream, and frighten her with a sense that it was 
not difficult for her to become a demon. Then her brain 
would be busy with wild romances of a flight from home in 
search of something less sordid and dreary; she would go to 
some great man — Walter Scott, perhaps — and tell him 
how wretched and how clever she was, and he would surely 
do something for her. But, in the middle of her vision, her 
father would perhaps enter the room for the evening, and, 
surprised that she sat still without noticing him, would say 
complainingly, “ Come, am I to fetch my slippers myself? ” 
The voice pierced through Maggie like a sword; there was 
another sadness besides her own, and she had been thinking 
of turning her back on it and forsaking it. 

This afternoon, the sight of Bob’s cheerful freckled face 
had given her discontent a new direction. She thought it 
was part of the hardship of her life that there was laid upon 
her the burthen of larger wants than others seemed to feel, 
— that she had to endure this wide, hopeless yearning for 
that something, whatever it was, that was greatest and best 
on this earth. She wished she could have been like Bob, 
with his easily satisfied ignorance, or like Tom, who had 
something to do on which he could fix his mind with a steady 
purpose, and disregard everything else. Poor child! as she 
leaned her head against the window-frame, with her hands 
clasped tighter and tighter, and her foot beating the ground, 
she was as lonely in her trouble as if she had been the 
only girl in the civilized world of that day who had come 
out of her school-life with a soul untrained for inevitable 
struggles, with no other part of her inherited share in the 
hard-won treasures of thought which generations of painful 
toil have laid up for the race of men, than shreds and patches 
of feeble literature and false history, with much futile in¬ 
formation about Saxon and other kings of doubtful example, 
but unhappily quite without that knowledge of the irre- 


312 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


1 versible laws within and without her, which, governing the 
habits, becomes morality, and developing the feelings of sub¬ 
mission and dependence, becomes religion, — as lonely in her 
trouble as if every other girl besides herself had been 
cherished and watched over by elder minds, not forgetful of 
their own early time, when need was keen and impulse 
strong. 

At last Maggie’s eyes glanced down on the books that lay 
on the window-shelf, and she half forsook her reverie to turn 
over listlessly the leaves of the “ Portrait Gallery,” but she 
soon pushed this aside to examine the little row of books 
tied together with string. Beauties of The Spectator, Ras- 
selas, Economy of Human Life, Gregory’s Letters, — she 
knew the sort of matter that was inside all these; the 
Christian Year, — that seemed to be a hymn-book, and she 
laid it down again; but Thomas a Kempis? — the name had 
come across her in her reading, and she felt the satisfaction, 
which every one knows, of getting some ideas to attach to 
a name that strays solitary in the memory. She took up 
the little, old, clumsy book with some curiosity; it had the 
corners turned down in many places, and some hand, now 
forever quiet, had made at certain passages strong pen-and- 
ink marks, long since browned by time. Maggie turned from 
leaf to leaf, and read where the quiet hand pointed: “ Know 
that the love of thyself doth hurt thee more than anything 
in the world. ... If thou seekest this or that, and wouldst 
be here or there to enjoy thy own will and pleasure, thou 
shalt never be quiet nor free from care; for in everything 
somewhat will be wanting, and in every place there will be 
some that will cross thee. . . . Both above and below, 
which way soever thou dost turn thee, everywhere thou 
shalt find the Cross; and everywhere of necessity thou must 
have patience, if thou wilt have inward peace, and enjoy 
an everlasting crown. ... If thou desire to mount unto 
this height, thou must set out courageously, and lay the axe 
to the root, that thou mayest pluck up and destroy that 
hidden inordinate inclination to thyself, and unto all private 
and earthly good. On this sin, that a man inordinately 



THE VALLEY OF HUMILIATION 


313 


loveth himself, almost all dependeth, whatsoever is thor¬ 
oughly to be overcome; which evil being once overcome and 
subdued, there will presently ensue great peace and tran¬ 
quillity. ... It is but little thou sufferest in comparison of 
them that have suffered so much, were so strongly tempted, 
so grievously afflicted, so many ways tried and exercised. 
Thou oughtest therefore to call to mind the more heavy 
sufferings of others, that thou mayest the easier bear thy 
little adversities. And if they seem not little unto thee, be¬ 
ware lest thy impatience be the cause thereof. . . . Blessed 
are those ears that receive the whispers of the divine voice, 
and listen not to the whisperings of the world. Blessed 
are those ears which hearken not unto the voice which 
soundeth outwardly, but unto the Truth, which teacheth 
inwardly.” 

A strange thrill of awe passed through Maggie while she 
read, as if she had been wakened in the night by a strain of 
solemn music, telling of beings whose souls had been astir 
while hers was in stupor. She went on from one brown 
mark to another, where the quiet hand seemed to point, 
hardly conscious that she was reading, seeming rather to 
listen while a low voice said: 



“ Why dost thou here gaze about, since this is not tlie 
place of thy rest? In heaven ought to be thy dwelling, and 
all earthly things are to be looked on as they forward thy 
journey thither. All things pass away, and thou together 
with them. Beware thou cleave not unto them, lest thou 
be entangled and perish. ... If a man should give all his 
substance, yet it is as nothing. And if he should do great 
penances, yet are they but little. And if he should attain to 
all knowledge, he is yet far off. And if he should be of great 
virtue, and very fervent devotion, yet is there much want¬ 
ing; to wit, one thing, which is most necessary for him. 
What is that? That having left all, he leave himself, and go 
wholly out of himself, and retain nothing of self-love. . . . 
I have often said unto thee, and now again I say the same, 
Forsake thyself, resign thyself, and thou shalt enjoy much 
inward peace. . . . Then shall all vain imaginations, evil 


314 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


perturbations, and superfluous cares fly away; then shall im¬ 
moderate fear leave thee, and inordinate love shall die.” 

Maggie drew a long breath and pushed her heavy hair 
back, as if to see a sudden vision more clearly. Here, then, 
was a secret of life that would enable her to renounce all 
other secrets; here was a sublime height to be reached with¬ 
out the help of outward things; here was insight, and 
strength, and conquest, to be won by means entirely within 
her own soul, where a supreme Teacher was waiting to be 
heard. It flashed through her like the suddenly appre¬ 
hended solution of a problem, that all the miseries of her 
young life had come from fixing her heart on her own pleas¬ 
ure, as if that were the central necessity of the universe; and 
for the first time she saw the possibility of shifting the posi¬ 
tion from which she looked at the gratification of her own 
desires, —of taking her stand out of herself, and looking at 
her own life as an insignificant part of a divinely guided 
whole. She read on and on in the old book, devouring 
eagerly the dialogues with the invisible Teacher, the pattern 
of sorrow, the source of all strength; returning to it after she 
had been called away, and reading till the sun went down be¬ 
hind the willows. With all the hurry of an imagination that 
could never rest in the present, she sat in the deepening twi¬ 
light forming plans of self-humiliation and entire devoted¬ 
ness; and in the ardor of first discovery, renunciation seemed 
to her the entrance into that satisfaction which she had so 
long been craving in vain. She had not perceived — how 
could she until she had lived longer ? — the inmost truth 
of the old monk’s outpourings, that renunciation remains 
sorrow, though a sorrow borne willingly. Maggie was still 
panting for happiness, and was in ecstasy because she had 
found the key to it. She knew nothing of doctrines and 
systems, of mysticism or quietism; but this voice out of the 
far-off middle ages was the direct communication of a human 
soul’s belief and experience, and came to Maggie as an un¬ 
questioned message. 

I suppose that is the reason why the small old-fashioned 
book, for which you need only pay sixpence at a book-stall, 


THE VALLEY OF HUMILIATION 


315 


works miracles to this day, turning bitter waters into sweet¬ 
ness; while expensive sermons and treatises, newly issued, 
leave all things as they were before. It was written down 
by a hand that waited for the heart’s prompting; it is the 
chronicle of a solitary, hidden anguish, struggle, trust, and 
triumph, not written on velvet cushions to teach endurance 
to those who are treading with bleeding feet on the stones. 
And so it remains to all time a lasting record of human 
needs and human consolations; the voice of a brother who, 
ages ago, felt and suffered and renounced, — in the cloister, 
perhaps, with serge gown and tonsured head, with much 
chanting and long fasts, and with a fashion of speech dif¬ 
ferent from ours, — but under the same silent far-off heav¬ 
ens, and with the same passionate desires, the same strivings, 
the same failures, the same weariness. 

In writing the history of unfashionable families, one is apt 
to fall into a tone of emphasis which is very far from being 
the tone of good society, where principles and beliefs are 
not only of an extremely moderate kind, but are always 
presupposed, no subjects being eligible but such as can be 
touched with a light and graceful irony. But then good 
society has its claret and its velvet carpets, its dinner- 
engagements six weeks deep, its opera and its faery ball¬ 
rooms ; rides off its ennui on thoroughbred horses; lounges 
at the club; has to keep clear of crinoline vortices; gets its 
science done by Faraday, and its religion by the superior 
clergy who are to be met in the best houses, — how should 
it have time or need for belief and emphasis? But good so¬ 
ciety, floated on gossamer wings of light irony, is of very 
expensive production; requiring nothing less than a wide and 
arduous national life condensed in unfragrant deafening fac¬ 
tories, cramping itself in mines, sweating at furnaces, grind¬ 
ing, hammering, weaving under more or less oppression of 
carbonic acid, or else, spread over sheepwalks, and scattered 
in lonely houses and huts on the clayey or chalky corn- 
lands, where the rainy days look dreary. This wide national 
life is based entirely on emphasis, — the emphasis of want, 
which urges it into all the activities necessary for the main- 


316 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


tenance of good society and light irony; it spends its heavy 
years often in a chill, uncarpeted fashion, amidst family dis¬ 
cord unsoftened by long corridors. Under such circum¬ 
stances, there are many among its myriads of souls who 
have absolutely needed an emphatic belief, life in this un- 
pleasurable shape demanding some solution even to unspecu- 
lative minds, — just as you inquire into the stuffing of your 
couch when anything galls you there, whereas eider-down 
and perfect French springs excite no question. Some have 
an emphatic belief in alcohol, and seek their ekstasis or out¬ 
side standing-ground in gin; but the rest require something 
that good society calls “ enthusiasm,” — something that will 
present motives in an entire absence of high prizes; some¬ 
thing that will give patience and feed human love when the 
limbs ache with weariness, and human looks are hard upon 
us; something, clearly, that lies outside personal desires, that 
includes resignation for ourselves and active love for what is 
not ourselves. 

Now and then that sort of enthusiasm finds a far-echoing 
voice that comes from an experience springing out of the 
deepest need; and it was by being brought within the long 
lingering vibrations of such a voice that Maggie, with her 
girl's face and unnoted sorrows, found an effort and a hope 
that helped her through years of loneliness, making out a 
faith for herself without the aid of established authori¬ 
ties and appointed guides; for they were not at hand, and 
her need was pressing. From what you know of her, you 
will not be surprised that she threw some exaggeration and 
wilfulness, some pride and impetuosity, even into her self- 
renunciation; her own life was still a drama for her, in 
which she demanded of herself that her part should be 
played with intensity. And so it came to pass that she 
often lost the spirit of humility by being excessive in the 
outward act; she often strove after too high a flight, and 
came down with her poor little half-fledged wings dabbled 
in the mud. 

For example, she not only determined to work at plain 
sewing, that she might contribute something toward the 


THE VALLEY OF HUMILIATION 


317 


fund in the tin box, but she went, in the first instance, 
in her zeal of self-mortification, to ask for it at a linen shop 
in St. Ogg’s, instead of getting it in a more quiet and indirect 
way; and could see nothing but what was entirely wrong and 
unkind, nay, persecuting, in Tom’s reproof of her for this 
unnecessary act. “ I don’t like my sister to do such things,” 
said Tom; “I’ll take care that the debts are paid, without 
your lowering yourself in that way.” Surely there was some 
tenderness and bravery mingled with the worldliness and 
self-assertion of that little speech; but Maggie held it as 
dross, overlooking the grains of gold, and took Tom’s re¬ 
buke as one of her outward crosses. Tom was very hard 
to her, she used to think, in her long night-watchings, — to 
her who had always loved him so; and then she strove to 
be contented with that hardness, and to require nothing. 
That is the path we all like when we set out on our abandon¬ 
ment of egoism, — the path of martyrdom and endurance, 
where the palm-branches grow, rather than the steep high¬ 
way of tolerance, just allowance, and self-blame, where 
there are no leafy honors to be gathered and worn. 

The old books, Virgil, Euclid, and Aldrich — that wrinkled 
fruit of the tree of knowledge — had been all laid by; for 
Maggie had turned her back on the vain ambition to share 
the thoughts of the wise. In her first ardor she flung away 
the books with a sort of triumph that she had risen above 
the need of them; and if they had been her own, she would 
have burned them, believing that she would never repent. 
She read so eagerly and constantly in her three books, the 
Bible, Thomas a Kempis, and the Christian Year (no longer 
rejected as a “ hymn-book ”), that they filled her mind with 
a continual stream of rhythmic memories; and she was too 
ardently learning to see all nature and life in the light of 
her new faith, to need any other material for her mind to 
work on, as she sat with her well-plied needle, making shirts 
and other complicated stitchings, falsely called “ plain,” — 
by no means plain to Maggie, since wristband and sleeve and 
the like had a capability of being sewed in wrong side out¬ 
ward in moments of mental wandering. 


318 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


Hanging diligently over her sewing, Maggie was a sight 
any one might have been pleased to look at. That new in¬ 
ward life of hers, notwithstanding some volcanic upheav- 
ings of imprisoned passions, yet shone out in her face with a 
tender soft light that mingled itself as added loveliness with 
the gradually enriched color and outline of her blossoming 
youth. Her mother felt the change in her with a sort of 
puzzled wonder that Maggie should be “ growing up so 
good ”; it was amazing that this once “ contrairy ” child was 
become so submissive, so backward to assert her own will. 
Maggie used to look up from her work and find her mother’s 
eyes fixed upon her; they were watching and waiting for 
the large young glance, as if her elder frame got some need¬ 
ful warmth from it. The mother was getting fond of her 
tall, brown girl, — the only bit of furniture now on which 
she could bestow her anxiety and pride; and Maggie, in spite 
of her own ascetic wish to have no personal adornment, was 
obliged to give way to her mother about her hair, and sub¬ 
mit to have the abundant black locks plaited into a coronet 
on the summit of her head, after the pitiable fashion of those 
antiquated times. 

“ Let your mother have that bit o’ pleasure, my dear,” 
said Mrs. Tulliver; “ I’d trouble enough with your hair 
once.” 

So Maggie, glad of anything that would soothe her mother, 
and cheer their long day together, consented to the vain 
decoration, and showed a queenly head above her old frocks, 
steadily refusing, however, to look at herself in the glass. 
Mrs. Tulliver liked to call the father’s attention to Maggie’s 
hair and other unexpected virtues, but he had a brusk reply 
to give. 

“ I knew well enough what she’d be, before now, — it’s 
nothing new to me. But it’s a pity she isn’t made o’ com¬ 
moner stuff; she’ll be thrown away, I doubt, — there’ll be 
nobody to marry her as is fit for her.” 

And Maggie’s graces of mind and body fed his gloom. He 
sat patiently enough while she read him a chapter, or said 
something timidly when they were alone together about 


THE VALLEY OF HUMILIATION 


319 


trouble being turned into a blessing. He took it all as part 
of his daughter’s goodness, which made his misfortunes the 
sadder to him because they damaged her chance in life. In 
a mind charged with an eager purpose and an unsatisfied 
vindictiveness, there is no room for new feelings; Mr. Tul- 
liver did not want spiritual consolation — he wanted to shake 
off the degradation of debt, and to have his revenge. 



BOOK V —WHEAT AND TARES 

CHAPTER I 

IN THE RED DEEPS 

T HE family sitting-room was a long room with a window 
at each end; one looking toward the croft and along 
the Ripple to the banks of the Floss, the other into the mill- 
yard. Maggie was sitting with her work against the latter 
window when she saw Mr. Wakem entering the yard, as 
usual, on his fine black horse; but not alone, as usual. Some 
one was with him, — a figure in a cloak, on a handsome 
pony. Maggie had hardly time to feel that it was Philip 
come back, before they were in front of the window, and he 
was raising his hat to her; while his father, catching the 
movement by a side-glance, looked sharply round at them 
both. 

Maggie hurried away from the window and carried her 
work upstairs; for Mr. Wakem sometimes came in and in¬ 
spected the books, and Maggie felt that the meeting with 
Philip would be robbed of all pleasure in the presence of 
the two fathers, Some day, perhaps, she could see him 
320 



WHEAT AND TARES 


321 


when they could just shake hands, and she could tell him 
that she remembered his goodness to Tom, and the things 
he had said to her in the old days, though they could never 
be friends any more. It was not at all agitating to Maggie 
to see Philip again; she retained her childish gratitude and 
pity toward him, and remembered his cleverness; and in the 
early weeks of her loneliness she had continually recalled the 
image of him among the people who had been kind to her in 
life, often wishing she had him for a brother and a teacher, 
as they had fancied it might have been, in their talk to¬ 
gether. But that sort of wishing had been banished along 
with other dreams that savored of seeking her own will; 
and she thought, besides, that Philip might be altered by his 
life abroad, — he might have become worldly, and really not 
care about her saying anything to him now. And yet his 
face was wonderfully little altered,— it was only a larger, 
more manly copy of the pale, small-featured boy’s face, 
with the gray eyes, and the boyish waving brown hair; there 
was the old deformity to awaken the old pity; and after all 
her meditations, Maggie felt that she really should like to 
say a few words to him. He might still be melancholy, as 
he always used to be, and like her to look at him kindly. 
She wondered if he remembered how he used to like her 
eyes; with that thought Maggie glanced toward the square 
looking-glass which was condemned to hang with its face 
toward the wall, and she half started from her seat to reach 
it down; but she checked herself and snatched up her work, 
trying to repress the rising wishes by forcing her memory 
to recall snatches of hymns, until she saw Philip and his 
father returning along the road, and she could go down 
again. 

It was far on in June now, and Maggie was inclined to 
lengthen the daily walk which was her one indulgence; but 
this day and the following she was so busy with work which 
must be finished that she never went beyond the gate, and 
satisfied her need of the open air by sitting out of doors. 
One of her frequent walks, when she was not obliged to go 
to St. Ogg’s, was to a spot that lay beyond what was called 


322 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


the “ Hill,” — an insignificant rise of ground crowned by 
trees, lying along the side of the road which ran by the 
gates of Dorlcote Mill. Insignificant I call it, because in 
height it was hardly more than a bank; but there may come 
moments when Nature makes a mere bank a means toward 
a fateful result; and that is why I ask you to imagine this 
high bank crowned with trees, making an uneven wall for 
some quarter of a mile along the left side of Dorlcote Mill 
and the pleasant fields behind it, bounded by the murmur¬ 
ing Ripple. Just where this line of bank slopes down again 
to the level, a by-road turned off and led to the other side of 
the rise, where it was broken into very capricious hollows 
and mounds by the working of an exhausted stone-quarry, 
so long exhausted that both mounds and hollows wer-e now 
clothed with brambles and trees, and here and there by a 
stretch of grass which a few sheep kept close-nibbled. In 
her childish days Maggie held this place, called the Red 
Deeps, in very great awe, and needed all her confidence in 
Tom’s bravery to reconcile her to an excursion thither,— 
visions of robbers and fierce animals haunting every hollow. 
But now it had the charm for her which any broken ground, 
any mimic rock and ravine, have for the eyes that rest 
habitually on the level; especially in summer, when she 
could sit on a grassy hollow under the shadow of a ^ranching 
ash, stooping aslant from the steep above her, and listen 
to the hum of insects, like tiniest bells on the garment of 
Silence, or see the sunlight piercing the distant boughs, as 
if to chase and drive home the truant heavenly blue of the 
wild hyacinths. In this June time, too, the dog-roses were 
in their glory, and that was an additional reason why Maggie 
should direct her walk to the Red Deeps, rather than to any 
other spot, on the first day she was free to wander at her 
will, — a pleasure she loved so well, that sometimes, in 
her ardors of renunciation, she thought she ought to deny 
herself the frequent indulgence in it. 

You may see her now, as she walks down the favorite 
turning and enters the Deeps by a narrow path through a 
group of Scotch firs, her tall figure and old lavender gown 


WHEAT AND TARES 


323 


visible through an hereditary black silk shawl of some wide- 
meshed net-like material; and now she is sure of being un¬ 
seen she takes off her bonnet and ties it over her arm. One 
would certainly suppose her to be farther on in life than 
her seventeenth year —■ perhaps because of the slow resigned 
sadness of the glance from which all search and unrest seem 
to have departed; perhaps because her broad-chested figure 
has the mould of early womanhood. Youth and health have 
withstood well the involuntary and voluntary hardships of 
her lot, and the nights in which she has lain on the hard 
floor for a penance have left no obvious trace; the eyes are 
liquid, the brown cheek is firm and round, the full lips are 
red. With her dark coloring and jet crown surmounting her 
tall figure, she seems to have a sort of kinship with the grand 
Scotch firs, at which she is looking up as if she loved them 
well. Yet one has a sense of uneasiness in looking at her, 
— a sense of opposing elements, of which a fierce collision is 
imminent; surely there is a hushed expression, such as one 
often sees in older faces under borderless caps, out of keep¬ 
ing with the resistant youth, which one expects to flash out 
in a sudden, passionate glance, that will dissipate all the 
quietude, like a damp fire leaping out again when all seemed 
safe. 

But Maggie herself was not uneasy at this moment. She 
was calmly enjoying the free air, while she looked up at the 
old fir-trees, and thought that those broken ends of branches 
were the records of past storms, which had only made the 
red stems soar higher. But while her eyes were still turned 
upward, she became conscious of a moving shadow cast by 
the evening sun on the grassy path before her, and looked 
down with a startled gesture to see Philip Wakem, who first 
raised his hat, and then, blushing deeply, came forward to 
her and put out his hand. Maggie, too, colored with sur¬ 
prise, which soon gave way to pleasure. She put out her 
hand and looked down at the deformed figure before her 
with frank eyes, filled for the moment with nothing but the 
memory of her child’s feelings, — a memory that was always 
strong in her. She was the first to speak. 


324 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


“ You startled me,” she said, smiling faintly; “ I never 
meet any one here. How came you to be walking here? 
Did you come to meet me? ” 

It was impossible not to perceive that Maggie felt her¬ 
self a child again. 

“ Yes, I did,” said Philip, still embarrassed; “ I wished to 
see you very much. I watched a long while yesterday on 
the bank near your house to see if you would come out, but 
you never came. Then I watched again to-day, and when 
I saw the way you took, I kept you in sight and came down 
the bank, behind there. I hope you will not be displeased 
with me.” 

“ No,” said Maggie, with simple seriousness, walking on as 
if she meant Philip to accompany her, “ I’m very glad you 
came, for I wished very much to have an opportunity of 
speaking to you. I’ve never forgotten how good you were 
long ago to Tom, and me too; but I was not sure that you 
would remember us so well. Tom and I have had a great 
deal of trouble sincte then, and I think that makes one think 
more of what happened before the trouble came.” 

“ I can’t believe that you have thought of me so much 
as I have thought of you,” said Philip, timidly. “ Do you 
know, when I was away, I made a picture of you as you 
looked that morning in the study when you said you would 
not forget me.” 

Philip drew a large miniature-case from his pocket, and 
opened it. Maggie saw her old self leaning on a table, with 
her black locks hanging down behind her ears, looking into 
space with strange, dreamy eyes. It was a water-color 
sketch, of real merit as a portrait. 

“ Oh dear,” said Maggie, smiling, and flushed with pleas¬ 
ure, “ what a queer little girl I was! I remember myself 
with my hair in that way, in that pink frock. I really was 
like a gypsy. I dare say I am now,” she added, after a 
little pause; “ am I like what you expected me to be? ” 

The words might have been those of a coquette, but the 
full, bright glance Maggie turned on Philip was not that of 
a coquette. She really did hope he liked her face as it was 


WHEAT AND TARES 


325 


now, but it was simply the rising again of her innate delight 
in admiration and love. Philip met her eyes and looked at 
her in silence for a long moment, before he said quietly* 
“ No, Maggie.” 

The light died out a little from Maggie’s face, and there 
was a slight trembling of the lip. Her eyelids fell lower, 
but she did not turn away her head, and Philip continued 
to look at her. Then he said slowly: 

“ You are very much more beautiful than I thought you 
would be.” 

“ Am I ? ” said Maggie, the pleasure returning in a deeper 
flush. She turned her face away from him and took some 
steps, looking straight before her in silence, as if she were 
adjusting her consciousness to this new idea. Girls are so 
accustomed to think of dress as the main ground of vanity, 
that, in abstaining from the looking-glass Maggie had thought 
more of abandoning all care for adornment than of renounc¬ 
ing the contemplation of her face. Comparing herself with 
elegant, wealthy young ladies, it had not occurred to her 
that she could produce any effect with her person. Philip 
seemed to like the silence well. He walked by her side, 
watching her face, as if that sight left no room for any other 
wish. They had passed from among the fir-trees, and had 
now come to a green hollow almost surrounded by an amphi¬ 
theatre of the pale pink dog-roses. But as the light about 
them had brightened, Maggie’s face had lost its glow. She 
stood still when they were in the hollows, and looking at 
Philip again, she said in a serious, sad voice: 

“ I wish we could have been friends, — I mean, if it would 
have been good and right for us. But that is the trial I have 
to bear in everything; I may not keep anything I used to 
love when I was little. The old books went; and Tom is 
different, and my father. It is like death. I must part with 
everything I cared for when I was a child. And I must part 
with you; we must never take any notice of each other again. 
That was what I wanted to speak to you for. I wanted 
to let you know that Tom and I can’t do as we like about 
such things, and that if I behave as if I had forgotten all 


326 MILL ON THE FLOSS 

about you, it is not out of envy or pride — or — or any 
bad feeling.” 

• Maggie spoke with more and more sorrowful gentleness as 
she went on, and her eyes began to fill with tears. The deep¬ 
ening expression of pain on Philip’s face gave him a stronger 
resemblance to his boyish self, and made the deformity ap¬ 
peal more strongly to her pity. 

“ I know; I see all that you mean,” he said, in a voice that 
had become feebler from discouragement; “ I know what 
there is to keep us apart on both sides. But it is not right, 
Maggie, — don’t you be angry with me, I am so used to call 
you Maggie in my thoughts, — it is not right to sacrifice 
everything to other people’s unreasonable feelings. I would 
give up a great deal for my father; but I would not give up 
a friendship or — or an attachment of any sort, in obedience 
to any wish of his that I didn’t recognize as right.” 

“ I don’t know,” said Maggie, musingly. “ Often, when 
I have been angry and discontented, it has seemed to me that 
I was not bound to give up anything; and I have gone on 
thinking till it has seemed to me that I could think away all 
my duty. But no good has ever come of that; it was an evil 
state of mind. I’m quite sure that whatever I might do, I 
should wish in the end that I had gone without anything for 
myself, rather than have made my father’s life harder to 
him.” 

“ But would it make his life harder if we were to see each 
other sometimes? ” said Philip. He was going to say some¬ 
thing else, but checked himself. 

“ Oh, I’m sure he wouldn’t like it. Don’t ask me why, or 
anything about it,” said Maggie, in a distressed tone. “ My 
father feels so strongly about some things. He is not at all 
happy.” 

“No more am I,” said Philip, impetuously; “I am not 
happy.” 

“ Why ? ” said Maggie, gently. “ At least — I ought not to 
ask — but I’m very, very sorry.” 

Philip turned to walk on, as if he had not patience to 
stand still any longer, and they went out of the hollow, wind- 


WHEAT AND TARES 


327 


ing amongst the trees and bushes in silence. After that last 
word of Philip’s, Maggie could not bear to insist immediately 
on their parting. 

“ I’ve been a great deal happier,” she said at last, timidly, 
ic since I have given up thinking about what is easy and 
pleasant, and being discontented because I couldn’t have my 
own will. Our life is determined for us; and it makes the 
mind very free when we give up wishing, and only think of 
bearing what is laid upon us, and doing what is given us to 
do.” 

“ But I can’t give up wishing,” said Philip, impatiently. 
“ It seems to me we can never give up longing and wishing 
while we are thoroughly alive. There are certain things 
we feel to be beautiful and good, and we must hunger after 
them. How can we ever be satisfied without them until our 
feelings are deadened? I delight in fine pictures; I long to 
be able to paint such. I strive and strive, and can’t pro¬ 
duce what I want. That is pain to me, and always will be 
pain, until my faculties lose their keenness, like aged eyes. 
Then there are many other things I long for,” — here Philip 
hesitated a little, and then said, — “ things that other men 
have, and that will always be denied me. My life will have 
nothing great or beautiful in it; I would rather not have 
lived.” 

“ Oh, Philip,” said Maggie, “ I wish you didn’t feel so.” 
But her heart began to beat with something of Philip’s dis¬ 
content. 

“ Well, then,” said he, turning quickly round and fixing 
his gray eyes entreatingly on her face, “I should be con¬ 
tented to live, if you would let me see you sometimes.” 
Then, checked by a fear which her face suggested, he looked 
away again and said more calmly, “ I have no friend to whom 
I can tell everything, no one who cares enough about me; and 
if I could only see you now and then, and you would let me 
talk to you a little, and show me that you cared for me, and 
that we may always be friends in heart, and help each other, 
then I might come to be glad of life.” 

“ But how’ can I see you, Philip ? ” said Maggie, falter- 


328 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


ingly. (Could she really do him good? It would be very 
hard to say “ good-by ” this day, and not speak to him again. 
Here was a new interest to vary the days; it was so much 
easier to renounce the interest before it came.) 

“ If you would let me see you here sometimes, — walk 
with you here, — I would be contented if it were only once 
or twice in a month. That could injure no one’s happiness, 
and it would sweeten my life. Besides,” Philip went on, with 
all the inventive astuteness of love at one-and-twenty, “ if 
there is any enmity between those who belong to us, we ought 
all the more to try and quench it by our friendship; I mean, 
that by our influence on both sides we might bring about a 
healing of the wounds that have been made in the past, if 
I could know everything about them. And I don’t believe 
there is any enmity in my own father’s mind; I think he 
has proved the contrary.” 

Maggie shook her head slowly, and was silent, under con¬ 
flicting thoughts. It seemed to her inclination, that to see 
Philip now and then, and keep up the bond of friendship 
with him, was something not only innocent, but good; per¬ 
haps she might really help him to find contentment as she 
had found it. The voice that said this made sweet music 
to Maggie; but athwart it there came an urgent, monotonous 
warning from another voice which she had been learning to 
obey, — the warning that such interviews implied secrecy; 
implied doing something she would dread to be discovered 
in, something that, if discovered, must cause anger and pain; 
and that the admission of anything so near doubleness would 
act as a spiritual blight. Yet the music would swell out 
again, like chimes borne onward by a recurrent breeze, per¬ 
suading her that the wrong lay all in the faults and weaknesses 
of others, and that there was such a thing as futile sacrifice 
for one to the injury of another. It was very cruel for 
Philip that he should be shrunk from, because of an un¬ 
justifiable vindictiveness toward his father, — poor Philip, 
whom some people would shrink from only because he was 
deformed. The idea that he might become her lover, or 
that her meeting him could cause disapproval in that light, 


WHEAT AND TARES 


329 


had not occurred to her; and Philip saw the absence of this 
idea clearly enough, saw it with a certain pang, although 
it made her consent to his request the less unlikely. There 
was bitterness to him in the perception that Maggie was 
almost as frank and unconstrained toward him as when she 
was a child. 

“ I can’t say either yes or no,” she said at last, turning 
round and walking toward the way she came; “ I must wait, 
lest I should decide wrongly. I must seek for guidance.” 

“ May I come again, then, to-morrow, or the next day, or 
next week? ” 

“ I think I had better write,” said Maggie, faltering again. 
“ I have to go to St. Ogg’s sometimes, and I can put the 
letter in the post.” 

“ Oh no,” said Philip, eagerly; “ that would not be so 
well. My father might see the letter — and — he has not 
any enmity, I believe, but he views things differently from 
me; he thinks a great deal about wealth and position. Pray 
let me come here once more. Tell me when it shall be; or 
if you can’t tell me, I will come as often as I can till I do see 
you.” 

“ I think it must be so, then,” said Maggie, “ for I can’t 
be quite certain of coming here any particular evening.” 

Maggie felt a great relief in adjourning the decision. She 
was free now to enjoy the minutes of companionship; she 
almost thought she might linger a little; the next time they 
met she should have to pain Philip by telling him her de¬ 
termination. 

“ I can’t help thinking,” she said, looking smilingly at 
him, after a few moments of silence, “ how strange it is that 
we should have met and talked to each other, just as if it 
had been only yesterday when we parted at Lorton. And 
yet we must both be very much altered in those five years, — 
I think it is five years. How was it you seemed to have a sort 
of feeling that I was the same Maggie? I was not quite so 
sure that you would be the same; I know you are so clever, 
and you must have seen and learnt so much to fill your 
mind; I was not quite sure you would care about me now.” 


330 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


“ I have never had any doubt that you would be the same, 
whenever I might see you,” said Philip, — “I mean, the 
same in everything that made me like you better than any 
one else. I don’t want to explain that; I don’t think any 
of the strongest effects our natures are susceptible of can 
ever be explained. We can neither detect the process by 
which they are arrived at, nor the mode in which they act 
on us. The greatest of painters only once painted a mysteri¬ 
ously divine child; he couldn’t have told how he did it, and 
we can’t tell why we feel it to be divine. I think there are 
stores laid up in our human nature that our understandings 
can make no complete inventory of. Certain strains of 
music affect me so strangely, I can never hear them without 
their changing my whole attitude of mind for a time, and if 
the effect would last, I might be capable of heroisms.” 

“ Ah! I know what you mean about music; I feel so,” 
said Maggie, clasping her hands with her old impetuosity. 
“ At least,” she added, in a saddened tone, “ I used to feel 
so when I had any music; I never have any now except 
the organ at church.” 

“ And you long for it, Maggie? ” said Philip, looking at 
her with affectionate pity. “ Ah, you can have very little 
that is beautiful in your life. Have you many books? You 
were so fond of them when you were a little girl.” 

They were come back to the hollow, round which the 
dog-roses grew, and they both paused under the charm of 
the faery evening light, reflected from the pale pink clusters. 

“ No, I have given up books,” said Maggie, quietly, “ ex¬ 
cept a very, very few.” 

Philip had already taken from his pocket a small volume, 
and was looking at the back as he said: 

“ Ah, this is the second volume, I see, else you might have 
liked to take it home with you. I put it in my pocket be¬ 
cause I am studying a scene for a picture.” 

Maggie had looked at the back too, and saw the title; it 
revived an old impression with overmastering force. 

“ The Pirate ,” she said, taking the book from Philip’s 
hands. “ Oh, I began that once; I read to where Minna is 


WHEAT AND TARES 


331 


Walking with Cleveland, and I could never get to read the 
rest. I went on with it in my own head, and I made several 
endings; but they were all unhappy. I could never make a 
happy ending out of that beginning. Poor Minna! I won¬ 
der what is the real end. For a long while I couldn’t get my 
mind away from the Shetland Isles,—I used to feel the 
wind blowing on me from the rough sea.” 

Maggie spoke rapidly, with glistening eyes. 

“ Take that volume home with you, Maggie,” said Philip, 
watching her with delight. “ I don’t want it now. I shall 
make a picture of you instead, — you, among the Scotch firs 
and the slanting shadows.” 

Maggie had not heard a word he had said; she was ab¬ 
sorbed in a page at which she had opened. But suddenly 
she closed the book, and gave it back to Philip, shaking her 
head with a backward movement, as if to say “ avaunt ” 
to floating visions. 

“ Do keep it, Maggie,” said Philip, entreatingly; “ it will 
give you pleasure.” 

“ No, thank you,” said Maggie, putting it aside with her 
hand and walking on. “ It would make me in love with this 
world again, as I used to be; it would make me long to see 
and know many things; it would make me long for a full 
life.” 

“ But you will not always be shut up in your present lot; 
why should you starve your mind in that way? It is nar¬ 
row asceticism; I don’t like to see you persisting in it, Mag¬ 
gie. Poetry and art and knowledge are sacred and pure.” 

“ But not for me, not for me,” said Maggie, walking more 
hurriedly; “ because I should want too much. I must wait; 
this life will not last long.” 

“ Don’t hurry away from me without saying 1 good-by/ 
Maggie,” said Philip, as they reached the group of Scotch 
firs, and she continued still to walk along without speaking. 
“ I must not go any farther, I think, must I ? ” 

“ Oh no, I forgot; good-by,” said Maggie, pausing, and 
putting out her hand to him. The action brought her fuel¬ 
ing back in a strong current to Philip; and after they had 


332 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


stood looking at each other in silence for a few moments, 
with their hands clasped, she said, withdrawing her hand: 

“ I’m very grateful to you for thinking of me all those 
years. It is very sweet to have people love us. What a 
wonderful, beautiful thing it seems that God should have 
made your heart so that you could care about a queer little 
girl whom you only knew for a few weeks! I remember 
saying to you that I thought you cared for me more than 
Tom did.” 

“ Ah, Maggie,” said Philip, almost fretfully, “ you would 
never love me so well as you love your brother.” 

“ Perhaps not,” said Maggie, simply; “but then, you 
know, the first thing I ever remember in my life is stand¬ 
ing with Tom by the side of the Floss, while he held my 
hand; everything before that is dark to me. But I shall 
never forget you, though we must keep apart.” 

“ Don’t say so, Maggie,” said Philip. “ If I kept that little 
girl in my mind for five years, didn’t I earn some part in 
her? She ought not to take herself quite away from me.” 

“ Not if I were free,” said Maggie; “ but I am not, I must 
submit.” She hesitated a moment, and then added, “ And 
I wanted to say to you, that you had better not take more 
notice of my brother than just bowing to him. He once 
told me not to speak to you again, and he doesn’t change 
his mind— Oh dear, the sun is set. I am too long away. 
Good-by.” She gave him her hand once more. 

“ I shall come here as often as I can till I see you again, 
Maggie. Have some feeling for me as well as for others.” 

“ Yes, yes, I have,” said Maggie, hurrying away, and 
quickly disappearing behind the last fir-tree; though Philip’s 
gaze after her remained immovable for minutes as if he saw 
her still. 

Maggie went home, with an inward conflict already begun; 
Philip went home to do nothing but remember and hope. 
You can hardly help blaming him severely. He was four or 
five years older than Maggie, and had a full consciousness of 
his feeling toward her to aid him in foreseeing the character 
his contemplated interviews with her would bear in the 


WHEAT AND TARES 


333 


opinion of a third person. But you must not suppose that 
he was capable of a gross selfishness, or that he could have 
been satisfied without persuading himself that he was seek¬ 
ing to infuse some happiness into Maggie’s life, — seeking 
this even more than any direct ends for himself. He could 
give her sympathy; he could give her help. There was not 
the slightest promise of love toward him in her manner; it 
was nothing more than the sweet girlish tenderness she had 
shown him when she was twelve. Perhaps she would never 
love him; perhaps no woman ever could love him. Well, 
then, he would endure that; he should at least have the 
happiness of seeing her, of feeling some nearness to her. 
And he clutched passionately the possibility that she might 
love him; perhaps the feeling would grow, if she could come 
to associate him with that watchful tenderness which her 
nature would be so keenly alive to. If any woman could love 
him, surely Maggie was that woman; there was such wealth 
of love in her, and there was no one to claim it all. Then, 
the pity of it, that a mind like hers should be withering in 
its very youth like a young forest-tree, for want of the light 
and space it was formed to flourish in! Could he not hinder 
that, by persuading her out of her system of privation? He 
would be her guardian angel; he would do anything, bear 
anything, for her sake — except not seeing her. 



CHAPTER II 


AUNT GLEGG LEARNS THE BREADTH OF BOB’S THUMB 
HILE Maggie’s life-struggles had lain almost entirely 



within her own soul, one shadowy army fighting an¬ 
other, and the slain shadows forever rising again, Tom was 
engaged in a dustier, noisier warfare, grappling with more 
substantial obstacles, and gaining more definite conquests. 
So it has been since the days of Hecuba, and of Hector, 
Tamer of horses; inside the gates, the women with stream¬ 
ing hair and uplifted hands offering prayers, watching the 
world’s combat from afar, filling their long, empty days with 
memories and fears; outside, the men, in fierce struggle with 
things divine and human, quenching memory in the stronger 
light of purpose, losing the sense of dread and even of 
wounds in the hurrying ardor of action. 

From what you have seen of Tom, I think he is not a 
youth of whom you would prophesy failure in anything he 
had thoroughly wished; the wagers are likely to be on his 
side, notwithstanding his small success in the classics. For 
Tom had never desired success in this field of enterprise; and 
for getting a fine flourishing growth of stupidity there is 
nothing like pouring out on a mind a good amount of subjects 
in which it feels no interest. But now Tom’s strong will 


334 


WHEAT AND TARES 


335 


bound together his integrity, his pride, his family regrets, and 
his personal ambition, and made them one force, concentrat¬ 
ing his efforts and surmounting discouragements. His uncle 
Deane, who watched him closely, soon began to conceive 
hopes of him, and to be rather proud that he had brought 
into the employment of the firm a nephew who appeared to 
be made of such good commercial stuff. The real kindness 
of placing him in the warehouse first was soon evident to 
Tom, in the hints his uncle began to throw out, that after 
a time he might perhaps be trusted to travel at certain 
seasons, and buy in for the firm various vulgar commodities 
with which I need not shock refined ears in this place; and 
it was doubtless with a view to this result that Mr. Deane, 
when he expected to take his wine alone, would tell Tom 
to step in and sit with him an hour, and would pass that 
hour in much lecturing and catechising concerning articles 
of export and import, with an occasional excursus of more 
indirect utility on the relative advantages to the merchants 
of St. Ogg’s of having goods brought in their own and in for¬ 
eign bottoms, — a subject on which Mr. Deane, as a ship¬ 
owner, naturally threw off a few sparks when he got warmed 
with talk and wine. 

Already, in the second year, Tom’s salary was raised; but 
all, except the price of his dinner and clothes, went home 
into the tin box; and he shunned comradeship, lest it should 
lead him into expenses in spite of himself. Not that Tom 
was moulded on the spoony type of the Industrious Appren¬ 
tice; he had a very strong appetite for pleasure, — would 
have liked to be a Tamer of horses and to make a dis¬ 
tinguished figure in all neighboring eyes, dispensing treats 
and benefits to others with well-judged liberality, and 
being pronounced one of the finest young fellows of those 
parts; nay, he determined to achieve these things sooner 
or later; but his practical shrewdness told him that the 
means to such achievements could only lie for him in 
present abstinence and self-denial; there were certain mile¬ 
stones to be passed, and one of the first was the payment 
of his father’s debts. Having made up his mind on that 


336 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


point, he strode along without swerving, contracting some 
rather saturnine sternness, as a young man is likely to do who 
has a premature call upon him for self-reliance. Tom felt 
intensely that common cause with his father which springs 
from family pride, and was bent on being irreproachable as 
a son; but his growing experience caused him to pass much 
silent criticism on the rashness and imprudence of his 
father’s past conduct; their dispositions were not in sym¬ 
pathy, and Tom’s face showed little radiance during his few 
home hours. Maggie had an awe of him, against which she 
struggled as something unfair to her consciousness of wider 
thoughts and deeper motives; but it was of no use to strug¬ 
gle. A character at unity with itself — that performs what 
it intends, subdues every counteracting impulse, and has 
no visions beyond the distinctly possible — is strong by its 
very negations. 

You may imagine that Tom’s more and more obvious un¬ 
likeness to his father was well fitted to conciliate the mater¬ 
nal aunts and uncles; and Mr. Deane’s favorable reports and 
predictions to Mr. Glegg concerning Tom’s qualifications for 
business began to be discussed amongst them with various 
acceptance. He was likely, it appeared, to do the family 
credit without causing it any expense and trouble. Mrs. 
Pullet had always thought it strange if Tom’s excellent com¬ 
plexion, so entirely that of the Dodsons, did not argue a cer¬ 
tainty that he would turn out well; his juvenile errors of 
running down the peacock, and general disrespect to his 
aunts, only indicating a tinge of Tulliver blood which he had 
doubtless outgrown. Mr. Glegg, who had contracted a 
cautious liking for Tom ever since his spirited and sensible 
behavior when the execution was in the house, was now 
warming into a resolution to further his prospects actively, 
— some time, when an opportunity offered of doing so in a 
prudent manner, without ultimate loss; but Mrs. Glegg ob¬ 
served that she was not given to speak without book, as 
some people were; that those who said least were most 
likely to find their words made good; and that when the 
right moment came, it would be seen who could do some- 


WHEAT AND TARES 


337 


thing better than talk. Uncle Pullet, after silent meditation 
for a period of several lozenges, came distinctly to the con¬ 
clusion, that when a young man was likely to do well, it was 
better not to meddle with him. 

Tom, meanwhile, had shown no disposition to rely on any 
one but himself, though, with a natural sensitiveness toward 
all indications of favorable opinion, he was glad to see his 
uncle Glegg look in on him sometimes in a friendly way dur¬ 
ing business hours, and glad to be invited to dine at his 
house, though he usually preferred declining on the ground 
that he was not sure of being punctual. But about a year 
ago, something had occurred which induced Tom to test his 
uncle Glegg’s friendly disposition. 

Bob Jakin, who rarely returned from one of his rounds 
without seeing Tom and Maggie, awaited him on the bridge 
as he was coming home from St. Ogg’s one evening, that 
they might have a little private talk. He took the liberty 
of asking if Mr. Tom had ever thought of making money by 
trading a bit on his own account. Trading, how? Tom 
wished to know. Why, by sending out a bit of a cargo to 
foreign ports; because Bob had a particular friend who had 
offered to do a little business for him in that way in Lace- 
ham goods, and would be glad to serve Mr. Tom on the 
same footing. Tom was interested at once, and begged for 
full explanation, wondering he had not thought of this plan 
before. He was so well pleased with the prospect of a spec¬ 
ulation that might change the slow process of addition into 
multiplication, that he at once determined to mention the 
matter to his father, and get his consent to appropriate 
some of the savings in the tin box to the purchase of a small 
cargo. He would rather not have consulted his father, but 
he had just paid his last quarter’s money into the tin box, 
and there was no other resource. All the savings were 
there; for Mr. Tulliver would not consent to put the money 
out at interest lest he should lose it. Since he had specu¬ 
lated in the purchase of some corn, and had lost by it, he 
could not be easy without keeping the money under his eye. 

Tom approached the subject carefully, as he was seated 


338 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


on the hearth with his father that evening, and Mr. Tul- 
liver listened, leaning forward in his arm-chair and looking 
up in Tom’s face with a sceptical glance. His first impulse 
was to give a positive refusal, but he was in some awe of 
Tom’s wishes, and since he had had the sense of being an 
“ unlucky ” father, he had lost some of his old peremptori¬ 
ness and determination to be master. He took the key of 
the bureau from his pocket, got out the key of the large 
chest, and fetched down the tin box, — slowly, as if he were 
trying to defer the moment of a painful parting. Then he 
seated himself against the table, and opened the box with 
that little padlock key which he fingered in his waistcoat 
pocket in all vacant moments. There they were, the dingy 
bank-notes and the bright sovereigns, and he counted them 
out on the table — only a hundred and sixteen pounds in 
two years, after all the pinching. 

“ How much do you want, then? ” he said, speaking as if 
the words burnt his lips. 

“ Suppose I begin with the thirty-six pounds, father ? ” 
said Tom. 

Mr. Tulliver separated this sum from the rest, and keep¬ 
ing his hand over it, said: 

“ It’s as much as I can save out o’ my pay in a year.” 

“ Yes, father; it is such slow work, saving out of the little 
money we get. And in this way we might double our 
savings.” 

“ Ay, my lad,” said the father, keeping his hand on the 
money, “ but you might lose it, —you might lose a year o’ 
my life, — and I haven’t got many.” 

Tom was silent. 

“ And you know I wouldn’t pay a dividend with the first 
hundred, because I wanted to see it all in a lump, — and 
when I see it, I’m sure on’t. If you trust to luck, it’s sure 
to be against me. It’s Old Harry’s got the luck in his hands; 
and if I lose one year I shall never pick it up again; death 
’ull o’ertake me.” 

Mr. Tulliver’s voice trembled, and Tom was silent for a 
few minutes before he said: 


WHEAT AND TARES 


339 


“ I'll give it up, father, since you object to it so strongly.” 

But, unwilling to abandon the scheme altogether, he de¬ 
termined to ask his uncle Glegg to venture twenty pounds, 
on condition of receiving five per cent of the profits. That 
was really a very small thing to ask. So when Bob called 
the next day at the wharf to know the decision, Tom pro¬ 
posed that they should go together to his uncle Glegg’s to 
open the business; for his diffident pride clung to him, and 
made him feel that Bob’s tongue would relieve him from 
some embarrassment. 

Mr. Glegg, at the pleasant hour of four in the afternoon 
of a hot August day, was naturally counting his wall-fruit 
to assure himself that the sum total had not varied since 
yesterday. To him entered Tom, in what appeared to Mr. 
Glegg very questionable companionship, — that of a man 
with a pack on his back, — for Bob was equipped for a 
new journey, — and of a huge brindled bull-terrier, who 
walked with a slow, swaying movement from side to side, 
and glanced from under his eyelids with a surly indifference 
which might after all be a cover to the most offensive de¬ 
signs. Mr. Glegg’s spectacles, which had been assisting him 
in counting the fruit, made these suspicious details alarm¬ 
ingly evident to him. 

“ Heigh! heigh! keep that dog back, will you ? ” he 
shouted, snatching up a stake and holding it before him 
as a shield when the visitors were within three yards of 
him. 

“ Get out wi’ you, Mumps,” said Bob, with a kick. “ He’s 
as quiet as a lamb, sir,” — an observation which Mumps 
corroborated by a low growl as he retreated behind his 
master’s legs. 

“ Why, what ever does this mean, Tom? ” said Mr. Glegg. 
“ Have you brought information about the scoundrels as 
cut my trees? ” If Bob came in the character of “ informa¬ 
tion,” Mr. Glegg saw reasons for tolerating some irregu¬ 
larity. 

“ No, sir,” said Tom; “I came to speak to you about a 
little matter of business of my own.” 


340 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


“ Ay — well; but what has this dog got to do with it ? * 
said the old gentleman, getting mild again. 

“ It’s my dog, sir,” said the ready Bob. “ An* it’s me as 
put Mr. Tom up to the bit o’ business; for Mr. Tom’s been 
a friend o’ mine iver since I was a little chap; fust thing 
iver I did was frightenin’ the birds for th’ old master. An’ 
if a bit o’ luck turns up, I’m allays thinkin’ if I can let Mr. 
Tom have a pull at it. An’ it’s a downright roarin’ shame, 
as when he’s got the chance o’ making a bit o’ money wi’ 
sending goods out, — ten or twelve per zent clear, when 
freight an’ commission’s paid, — as he shouldn’t lay hold o’ 
the chance for want o’ money. An’ when there’s the Lace- 
ham goods, — lors! they’re made o’ purpose for folks as 
want to send out a little carguy; light, an’ take up no room, 
— you may pack twenty pounds so as you can’t see the 
passill; an’ they’re manifacturs as please fools, so I reckon 
they aren’t like to want a market. An’ I’d go to Laceham 
an’ buy in the goods for Mr. Tom along wi’ my own. An’ 
there’s the shupercargo o’ the bit of a vessel as is goin’ to 
take ’em out. I know him partic’lar; he’s a solid man, an’ 
got a family i’ the town here. Salt, his name is, — an’ a 
briny chap he is too — an’ if you don’t believe me, I can 
take you to him.” 

Uncle Glegg stood open-mouthed with astonishment at 
this unembarrassed loquacity, with which his understand¬ 
ing could hardly keep pace. He looked at Bob, first over 
his spectacles, then through them, then over them again; 
while Tom, doubtful of his uncle’s impression, began to wish 
he had not brought this singular Aaron, or mouthpiece. 
Bob’s talk appeared less seemly, now some one besides him¬ 
self was listening to it. 

“ You seem to be a knowing fellow,” said Mr. Glegg, at 
last. 

“ Ay, sir, you say true,” returned Bob, nodding his head 
aside; “ I think my head’s all alive inside like an old cheese, 
for I’m so full o’ plans, one knocks another over. If I hadn’t 
Mumps to talk to, I should^get top-heavy an’ tumble in a fit. 

I suppose it’s because I niver went to school much. That’s 


WHEAT AND TARES 


341 


what I jaw my old mother for. I says, ‘ You should ha’ 
sent me to school a bit more/ I says, * an’ then I could ha’ 
read i’ the books like fun, an’ kep’ my head cool an’ empty/ 
Lors, she’s fine an’ comfor’ble now, my old mother is; she 
ates her baked meat an’ taters as often as she likes. For 
I’m gettin’ so full o’ money, I must hev a wife to spend it 
for me. But it’s botherin’, a wife is, — and Mumps mightn’t 
like her.” 

Uncle Glegg, who regarded himself as a jocose man since 
he had retired from business, was beginning to find Bob 
amusing, but he had still a disapproving observation to 
make, which kept his face serious. 

“ Ah,” he said, “ I should think you’re at a loss for ways 
o’ spending your money, else you wouldn’t keep that big 
dog, to eat as much as two Christians. It’s shameful — 
shameful! ” But he spoke more in sorrow than in anger, 
and quickly added: 

“ But, come now, let’s hear more about this business, Tom. 
I suppose you want a little sum to make a venture with. 
But where’s all your own money? You don’t spend it all — 
eh?” 

“ No, sir,” said Tom, coloring; “but my father is un¬ 
willing to risk it, and I don’t like to press him. If I could 
get twenty or thirty pounds to begin with, I could pay five 
per cent for it, and then I could gradually make a little 
capital of my own, and do without a loan.” 

“ Ay — ay,” said Mr. Glegg, in an approving tone; “ that’s 
not a bad notion, and I won’t say as I wouldn’t be your 
man. But it ’ull be as well for me to see this Salt, as you 
talk on. And then — here’s this friend o’ yours offers to buy 
the goods for you. Perhaps you’ve got somebody to stand 
surety for you if the money’s put into your hands? ” added 
the cautious old gentleman, looking over his spectacles at 
Bob. 

“ I don’t think that’s necessary, uncle,” said Tom. “ At 
least, I mean it would not be necessary for me, because I 
know Bob well; but perhaps it would be right for you to 
have some security.” 


342 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


“You get your percentage out o’ the purchase, I sup¬ 
pose? ” said Mr. Glegg, looking at Bob. 

“ No, sir,” said Bob, rather indignantly; “ I didn’t offer 
to get a apple for Mr. Tom, o’ purpose to hev a bite out of 
it myself. When I play folks tricks, there’ll be more fun in 
’em nor that.” 

“ Well, but it’s nothing but right you should have a 
small percentage,” said Mr. Glegg. “ I’ve no opinion o’ 
transactions where folks do things for nothing. It allays 
looks bad.” 

“ Well, then,” said Bob, whose keenness saw at once what 
was implied, “ I’ll tell you what I get by’t, an’ it’s money in 
my pocket in the end, — I make myself look big, wi’ makin’ 
a bigger purchase. That’s what I’m thinking on. Lors! 
I’m a ’cute chap, — I am.” 

“ Mr. Glegg, Mr. Glegg! ” said a severe voice from the 
open parlor window, “ pray are you coming in to tea, or 
are you going to stand talking with packmen till you get 
murdered in the open daylight? ” 

“ Murdered? ” said Mr. Glegg; “ what’s the woman talk¬ 
ing of? Here’s your nephey Tom come about a bit o’ 
business.” 

“ Murdered, — yes, — it isn’t many ’sizes ago since a pack¬ 
man murdered a young woman in a lone place, and stole her 
thimble, and threw her body into a ditch.” 

“ Nay, nay,” said Mr. Glegg, soothingly, “ you’re thinking 
o’ the man wi’ no legs, as drove a dog-cart.” 

“ Well, it’s the same thing, Mr. Glegg, only you’re fond o’ 
contradicting what I say; and if my nephey’s come about 
business, it ’ud be more fitting if you’d bring him into the 
house, and let his aunt know about it, instead o’ whispering 
in corners, in that plotting, underminding way.” 

“ Well, well,” said Mr. Glegg, “ we’ll come in now.” 

“ You needn’t stay here,” said the lady to Bob, in a loud 
voice, adapted to the moral, not the physical, distance be¬ 
tween them. “We don’t want anything. I don’t deal wi’ 
packmen. Mind you shut the gate after you.” 

“Stop a bit; not so fast,” said Mr. Glegg; “I haven’t 


WHEAT AND TARES 343 

done with this young man yet. Come in, Tom; come in,” he 
added, stepping in at the French window. 

“ Mr. Glegg,” said Mrs. G., in a fatal tone, “ if you’re go¬ 
ing to let that man and his dog in on my carpet, before my 
very face, be so good as to let me know. A wife’s got a 
right to ask that, I hope.” 

“ Don’t you be uneasy, mum,” said Bob, touching his cap. 
He saw at once that Mrs. Glegg was a bit of game worth 
running down, and longed to be at the sport; “ we’ll stay out 
upo’ the gravel here, — Mumps and me will. Mumps knows 
his company, — he does. I might hish at him by th’ hour 
together, before he’d fly at a real gentlewoman like you. It’s 
wonderful how he knows which is the good-looking ladies; 
and’s partic’lar fond of ’em when they’ve good shapes. 
Lors! ” added Bob, laying down his pack on the gravel, 
“ it’s a thousand pities such a lady as you shouldn’t deal 
with a packman, i’stead o’ goin’ into these newfangled shops, 
where there’s half-a-dozen fine gents wi’ their chins propped 
up wi’ a stiff stock, a-looking like bottles wi’ ornamental 
stoppers, an’ all got to get their dinner out of a bit o’ 
calico; it stan’s to reason you must pay three times the price 
you pay a packman, as is the nat’ral way o’ gettin’ goods, — 
an’ pays no rent, an’ isn’t forced to throttle himself till the 
lies are squeezed out on him, whether he will or no. But 
lors! mum, you know what it is better nor I do, — you can 
see through them shopmen, I’ll be bound.” 

“ Yes, I reckon I can, and through the packmen too,” ob¬ 
served Mrs. Glegg, intending to imply that Bob’s flattery 
had produced no effect on her; while her husband, standing 
behind her with his hands in his pockets and legs apart, 
winked and smiled with conjugal delight at the probability 
of his wife’s being circumvented. 

“ Ay, to be sure, mum,” said Bob. “ Why, you must ha’ 
dealt wi’ no end o’ packmen when you war a young lass — 
before the master here had the luck to set eyes on you. 
I know where you lived, I do, — seen th’ house many a 
time, — close upon Squire Darleigh’s, — a stone house wi’ 
steps-” 


344 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


“ Ah, that it had,” said Mrs. Glegg, pouring out the tea. 
“ You know something o’ my family, then? Are you akin 
to that packman with a squint in his eye, as used to bring 
th’ Irish linen ? ” 

“ Look you there now! ” said Bob, evasively. 11 Didn’t I 
know as you’d remember the best bargains you’ve made in 
your life was made wi’ packmen? Why, you see even a 
squintin’ packman’s better nor a shopman as can see 
straight. Lors! if I’d had the luck to call at the stone house 
wi’ my pack, as lies here,” — stooping and thumping the 
bundle emphatically with his fist, — “ an’ th’ handsome 
young lasses all stannin’ out on the stone steps, it ’ud ha’ 
been summat like openin’ a pack, that would. It’s on’y 
the poor houses now as a packman calls on, if it isn’t for the 
sake o’ the sarvant-maids. They’re paltry times, these are. 
Why, mum, look at the printed cottons now, an’ what they 
was when you wore ’em, — why, you wouldn’t put such a 
thing on now, I can see. It must be first-rate quality, the 
manifactur as you’d buy, — summat as ’ud wear as well as 
your own faitures.” 

“ Yes, better quality nor any you’re like to carry; you’ve 
got nothing first-rate but brazenness, I’ll be bound,” said 
Mrs. Glegg, with a triumphant sense of her insurmountable 
sagacity. “ Mr. Glegg, are you going ever to sit down to 
your tea? Tom, there’s a cup for you.” 

“ You speak true there, mum,” said Bob. “ My pack isn’t 
for ladies like you. The time’s gone by for that. Bargains 
picked up dirt cheap! A bit o’ damage here an’ there, as 
can be cut out, or else niver seen i’ the wearin’, but not fit 
to offer to rich folks as can pay for the look o’ things as no¬ 
body sees. I’m not the man as ’ud offer t’ open my pack 
to you, mum; no, no; I’m a imperent chap, as you say,— 
these times makes folks imperent, — but I’m not up to the 
mark o’ that.” 

“Why, what goods do you carry in your pack?” said 
Mrs. Glegg. “ Fine-colored things, I suppose, — shawls an’ 
that ? ” 

“ All sorts, mum, all sorts,” said Bob, — thumping his 


WHEAT AND TARES 


345 


bundle; “ but let us say no more about that, if you please. 
I’m here upo’ Mr. Tom’s business, an’ I’m not the man to 
take up the time wi’ my own.” 

“And pray, what is this business as is to be kept from 
me? ” said Mrs. Glegg, who, solicited by a double curiosity, 
was obliged to let the one-half wait. 

“ A little plan o’ nephey Tom’s here,” said good-natured 
Mr. Glegg; “ and not altogether a bad ’un, I think. A little 
plan for making money; that’s the right sort o’ plan for 
young folks as have got their fortin to make, eh, Jane? ” 

“ But I hope it isn’t a plan where he expects iverything 
to be done for him by his friends; that’s what the young 
folks think of mostly nowadays. And pray, what has this 
packman got to do wi’ what goes on in our family? Can’t 
you speak for yourself, Tom, and let your aunt know things, 
as a nephey should? ” 

“ This is Bob Jakin, aunt,” said Tom, bridling the irrita¬ 
tion that aunt Glegg’s voice always produced. “ I’ve known 
him ever since we were little boys. He’s a very good fellow, 
and always ready to do me a kindness. And he has had some 
experience in sending goods out, — a small part of a cargo 
as a private speculation; and he thinks if I could begin to 
do a little in the same way, I might make some money. A 
large interest is got in that way.” 

“ Large int’rest ? ” said aunt Glegg, with eagerness; “ and 
what do you call large int’rest? ” 

“ Ten or twelve per cent, Bob says, after expenses are 
paid.” 

“ Then why wasn’t I let to know o’ such things before, 
Mr. Glegg? ” said Mrs. Glegg, turning to her husband, with 
a deep grating tone of reproach. “ Haven’t you allays told 
me as there was no getting more nor five per cent? ” 

“ Pooh, pooh, nonsense, my good woman,” said Mr. Glegg. 
“ You couldn’t go into trade, could you? You can’t get 
more than five per cent with security.” 

“ But I can turn a bit o’ money for you, an’ welcome, 
mum,” said Bob, “ if you’d like to risk it, — not as there’s 
any risk to speak on. But if you’d a mind to lend a bit 


346 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


o’ money to Mr. Tom, he’d pay you six or seven per zent, 
an’ get a trifle for himself as well; an’ a good-natur’d lady 
like you ’ud like the feel o’ the money better if your nephey 
took part on it.” 

“ What do you say, Mrs. G.?” said Mr. Glegg. “I’ve 
a notion, when I’ve made a bit more inquiry, as I shall per¬ 
haps start Tom here with a bit of a nest-egg, — he’ll pay 
me int’rest, you know, — an’ if you’ve got some little sums 
lyin’ idle twisted up in a stockin’ toe, or that-” 

“Mr. Glegg, it’s beyond iverything! You’ll go and give 
information to the tramps next, as they may come and 
rob me.” 

“ Well, well, as I was sayin’, if you like to join me wi’ 
twenty pounds, you can — I’ll make it fifty. That’ll be a 
pretty good nest-egg, eh, Tom? ” 

“ You’re not counting on me, Mr. Glegg, I hope,” said his 
wife. “ You could do fine things wi’ my money, I don’t 
doubt.” 

“ Very well,” said Mr. Glegg, rather snappishly, “ then 
we’ll do without you. I shall go with you to see this Salt,” 
he added, turning to Bob. 

“ And now, I suppose, you’ll go all the other way, Mr. 
Glegg,” said Mrs. G., “ and want to shut me out o’ my own 
nephey’s business. I never said I wouldn’t put money into 
it, — I don’t say as it shall be twenty pounds, though you’re 
so ready to say it for me, — but he’ll see some day as his 
aunt’s in the right not to risk the money she’s saved for him 
till it’s proved as it won’t be lost.” 

“Ay, that’s a pleasant sort o’ risk, that is,” said Mr. 
Glegg, indiscreetly winking at Tom, who couldn’t avoid 
smiling. But Bob stemmed the injured lady’s outburst. 

“ Ay, mum,” he said admiringly, “ you know what’s what 
— you do. An’ it’s nothing but fair. You see how the first 
bit of a job answers, an’ then you’ll come down handsome. 
Lors, it’s a fine thing to hev good kin. I got my bit of a nest- 
egg, as the master calls it, all by my own sharpness, — ten 
suvreigns it was, — wi’ dousing the fire at Torry’s mill, an’ 
it’s growed an’ growed by a bit an’ a bit, till I’n got a matter 



WHEAT AND TARES 


347 


o’ thirty pound to lay out, besides makin’ my mother com- 
for’ble. I should get more, on’y I’m such a soft wi’ the 
women, — I can’t help lettin’ ’em hev such good bargains. 
There’s this bundle, now,” thumping it lustily, “ any other 
chap ’ud make a pretty penny out on it. But me! —lors, 
I shall sell ’em for pretty near what I paid for ’em.” 

“ Have you got a bit of good net, now? ” said Mrs. Glegg, 
in a patronizing tone, moving from the tea-table, and fold¬ 
ing her napkin. 

“ Eh, mum, not what you’d think it worth your while to 
look at. I’d scorn to show it you. It ’ud be an insult to 
you.” 

“ But let me see,” said Mrs. Glegg, still patronizing. “ If 
they’re damaged goods, they’re like enough to be a bit the 
better quality.” 

“ No, mum. I know my place,” said Bob, lifting up his 
pack and shouldering it. “ I’m not going t’ expose the low¬ 
ness o’ my trade to a lady like you. Packs is come down 
i’ the world; it ’ud cut you to th’ heart to see the difference. 
I’m at your sarvice, sir, when you’ve a mind to go and see 
Salt.” 

“ All in good time,” said Mr. Glegg, really unwilling to 
cut short the dialogue. “ Are you wanted at the wharf, 
Tom?” 

“ No, sir; I left Stowe in my place.” 

“ Come, put down your pack, and let me see,” said Mrs. 
Glegg, drawing a chair to the window, and seating herself 
with much dignity. 

“ Don’t you ask it, mum,” said Bob, entreatingly. 

“ Make no more words,” said Mrs. Glegg, severely, “ but 
do as I tell you.” 

“ Eh, mum, I’m loth, that I am,” said Bob, slowly de¬ 
positing his pack on the step, and beginning to untie it with 
unwilling fingers. “ But what you order shall be done ” 
(much fumbling in pauses between the sentences). “It’s 
not as you’ll buy a single thing on me, — I’d be sorry for you 
to do it, — for think o’ them poor women up i’ the villages 
there, as niver stir a hundred yards from home, — it ’ud be 


348 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


a pity for anybody to buy up their bargains. Lors, it’s as 
good as a junketing to ’em when they see me wi’ my pack, 
an’ I shall niver pick up such bargains for ’em again. Least 
ways, I’ve no time now, for I’m off to Laceham. See here 
now,” Bob went on, becoming rapid again, and holding up a 
scarlet woolen kerchief with an embroidered wreath in the 
corner; “ here’s a thing to make a lass’s mouth water, an’ 
on’y two shillin’ — an’ why ? Why, ’cause there’s a bit of a 
moth-hole i’ this plain end. Lors, I think the moths an’ the 
mildew was sent by Providence o’ purpose to cheapen the 
goods a bit for the good-lookin’ women as han’t got much 
money. If it hadn’t been for the moths, now, every hanki- 
cher on ’em ’ud ha’ gone to the rich, handsome ladies, like 
you, mum, at five shillin’ apiece, — not a farthin’ less; but 
what does the moth do? Why, it nibbles off three shillin’ 
o’ the price i’ no time; an’ then a packman like me can 
carry’t to the poor lasses as live under the dark thack, to 
make a bit of a blaze for ’em. Lors, it’s as good as a fire, 
to look at such a hankicher! ” 

Bob held it at a distance for admiration; but Mrs. Glegg 
said sharply: 

“Yes, but nobody wants a fire this time o’ year. Put 
these colored things by; let me look at your nets, if you’ve 
got ’em.” 

“ Eh, mum, I told you how it ’ud be,” said Bob, flinging 
aside the colored things with an air of desperation. “ I 
knowed it ’ud turn again’ you to look at such paltry articles 
as I carry. Here’s a piece o’ figured muslin now, what’s the 
use o’ you lookin’ at it? You might as well look at poor 
folks’s victual, mum; it ’ud on’y take away your appetite. 
There’s a yard i’ the middle on’t as the pattern’s all missed, 
— lors, why, it’s a muslin as the Princess Victoree might ha’ 
wore; but,” added Bob, flinging it behind him on to the turf, 
as if to save Mrs. Glegg’s eyes, “ it’ll be bought up by the 
huckster’s wife at Fibb’s End, — that’s where it’ll go, — ten 
shillin’ for the whole lot — ten yards, countin’ the damaged 
un — five-an’-twenty shillin’ ’ud ha’ been the price, not a 
penny less. But I’ll say no more, mum; it’s nothing to you; 


WHEAT AND TARES 


349 


a piece o’ muslin like that; you can afford to pay three 
times the money for a thing as isn’t half so good. It’s nets 
you talked on; well, I’ve got a piece as ’ull serve you to 
make fun on-” 

“ Bring me that muslin,” said Mrs. Glegg. “ It’s a buff; 
I’m partial to buff.” 

“ Eh, but a damaged thing,” said Bob, in a tone of depre¬ 
cating disgust. “ You’d do nothing with it, mum; you’d 
give it to the cook, I know you would, an’ it ’ud be a pity, 

— she’d look too much like a lady in it; it’s unbecoming for 
servants.” 

“ Fetch it, and let me see you measure it,” said Mrs. 
Glegg, authoritatively. 

Bob obeyed with ostentatious reluctance. 

“ See what there is over measure! ” he said, holding forth 
the extra half-yard, while Mrs. Glegg was busy examining 
the damaged yard, and throwing her head back to see how 
far the fault would be lost on a distant view. 

“ I’ll give you six shilling for it,” she said, throwing it 
down with the air of a person who mentions an ultimatum. 

“ Didn’t I tell you now, mum, as it ’ud hurt your feel¬ 
ings to look at my pack? That damaged bit’s turned your 
stomach now; I see it has,” said Bob, wrapping the muslin 
up with the utmost quickness, and apparently about to 
fasten up his pack. “ You’re used to seein’ a different sort 
o’ article carried by packmen, when you lived at the stone 
house. Packs is come down i’ the world; I told you that: 
my goods are for common folks. Mrs. Pepper ’ull give me 
ten shillin’ for that muslin, an’ be sorry as I didn’t ask her 
more. Such articles answer i’ the wearin’, — they keep their 
color till the threads melt away i’ the wash-tub, an’ that 
won’t be while I’m a young un.” 

“ Well, seven shilling,” said Mrs. Glegg. 

“ Put it out o’ your mind, mum, now do,” said Bob. 
“ Here’s a bit o’ net, then, for you to look at before I tie 
up my pack, just for you to see what my trade’s come to, 

— spotted and sprigged, you see, beautiful but yallow, — ’s 
been lyin’ by an’ got the wrong color. I could niver ha’ 



350 


MILL ON THE FLOSS ‘ 


bought such net, if it hadn’t been yallow. Lors, it’s took 
me a deal o’ study to know the vally o’ such articles; when 
I begun to carry a pack, I was as ignirant as a pig; net or 
calico was all the same to me. I thought them things the 
most vally as was the thickest. I was took in dreadful, for 
I’m a straight-forrard chap, — up to no tricks, mum. I can 
on’y say my nose is my own, for if I went beyond, I should 
lose myself pretty quick. An’ I gev five-an’-eightpence for 
that piece o’ net, — if I was to tell y’ anything else I should 
be tollin’ you fibs, — an’ five-an’-eightpence I shall ask for it, 
not a penny more, for it’s a woman’s article, an’ I like to 
’commodate the women. Five-an’-eightpence for six yards, 
— as cheap as if it was only the dirt on it as was paid for.” 

“ I don’t mind having three yards of it,” said Mrs. Glegg. 

“ Why, there’s but six altogether,” said Bob. “ No, mum, 
it isn’t worth your while; you can go to the shop to-morrow 
an’ get the same pattern ready whitened. It’s on’y three 
times the money; what’s that to a lady like you? ” He gave 
an emphatic tie to his bundle. 

“ Come, lay me out that muslin,” said Mrs. Glegg. 
“ Here’s eight shilling for it.” 

“ You will be jokin’,” said Bob, looking up with a laugh¬ 
ing face; “ I see’d you was a pleasant lady when I fust come 
to the winder.” 

“ Well, put it me out,” said Mrs. Glegg, peremptorily. 

“ But if I let you have it for ten shillin’, mum, you’ll be 
so good as not tell nobody. I should be a laughin’-stock; 
the trade ’ud hoot me, if they knowed it. I’m obliged to 
make believe as I ask more nor I do for my goods, else they’d 
find out I was a flat. I’m glad you don’t insist upo’ buyin’ 
the net, for then I should ha’ lost my two best bargains for 
Mrs. Pepper o’ Fibb’s End, an’ she’s a rare customer.” 

“ Let me look at the net again,” said Mrs. Glegg, yearn¬ 
ing after the cheap spots and sprigs, now they were 
vanishing. 

“ Well, I can’t deny you, mum,” said Bob, handing it out. 
“ Eh! see what a pattern now! Real Laceham goods. Now, 
this is the sort o’ article I’m recommendin’ Mr. Tom to send 


WHEAT AND TARES 


351 


out. Lors, it’s a fine thing for anybody as has got a bit o’ 
money; these Laceham goods ’ud make it breed like maggits. 
If I was a lady wi’ a bit o’ money! —why, I know one as 
put thirty pound into them goods, — a lady wi’ a cork leg, 
but as sharp, — you wouldn’t catch her runnin’ her head into 
a sack; she’d see her way clear out o’ anything afore she’d 
be in a hurry to start. Well, she let out thirty pound to a 
young man in the drapering line, and he laid it out i’ Lace¬ 
ham goods, an’ a shupercargo o’ my acquinetance (not Salt) 
took ’em out, an’ she got her eight per zent fust go off; 
an’ now you can’t hold her but she must be sendin’ out 
carguies wi’ every ship, till she’s gettin’ as rich as a Jew. 
Bucks her name is, she doesn’t live i’ this town. Now then, 
mum, if you’ll please to give me the net-” 

“ Here’s fifteen shilling, then, for the two,” said Mrs. 
Glegg. “ But it’s a shameful price.” 

“ Nay, mum, you’ll niver say that when you’re upo’ your 
knees i’ church i’ five years’ time. I’m makin’ you a present 
o’ th’ articles; I am, indeed. That eightpence shaves off my 
profit as clean as a razor. Now then, sir,” continued Bob, 
shouldering his pack, “ if you please, I’ll be glad to go and 
see about makin’ Mr. Tom’s fortin. Eh, I wish I’d got an¬ 
other twenty pound to lay out my sen; I shouldn’t stay to 
say my Catechism afore I knowed what to do wi’ ’t.” 

“ Stop a bit, Mr. Glegg,” said the lady, as her husband 
took his hat, “ you never will give me the chance o’ speak¬ 
ing. You’ll go away now, and finish everything about this 
business, and come back and tell me it’s too late for me to 
speak. As if I wasn’t my nephey’s own aunt, and th’ head o’ 
the family on his mother’s side; and laid by guineas, all full 
weight, for him, as he’ll know who to respect when I’m laid 
in my coffin.” 

“ Well, Mrs. G., say what you mean,” said Mr. G., hastily. 

“ Well, then, I desire as nothing may be done without my 
knowing. I don’t say as I sha’n’t venture twenty pounds, 
if you make out as everything’s right and safe. And if I 
do, Tom,” concluded Mrs. Glegg, turning impressively to her 
nephew, “ I hope you’ll allays bear it in mind and be grate- 


352 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


ful for such an aunt. I mean you to pay me interest, you 
know; I don’t approve o’ giving; we niver looked for that 
in my family.” 

“ Thank you, aunt,” said Tom, rather proudly. “ I pre¬ 
fer having the money only lent to me.” 

“Very well; that’s the Dodson sperrit,” said Mrs. Glegg, 
rising to get her knitting with the sense that any further re¬ 
mark after this would be bathos. 

Salt — that eminently “ briny chap ” — having been dis¬ 
covered in a cloud of tobacco-smoke at the Anchor Tavern, 
Mr. Glegg commenced inquiries which turned out satis¬ 
factorily enough to warrant the advance of the “ nest-egg,” 
to which aunt Glegg contributed twenty pounds; and in this 
modest beginning you see the ground of a fact which might 
otherwise surprise you; namely, Tom’s accumulation of a 
fund, unknown to his father, that promised in no very long 
time to meet the more tardy process of saving, and quite 
cover the deficit. When once his attention had been turned 
to this source of gain, Tom determined to make the most of 
it, and lost no opportunity of obtaining information and ex¬ 
tending his small enterprises. In not telling his father, he 
was influenced by that strange mixture of opposite feelings 
which often gives equal truth to those who blame an action 
and those who admire it, — partly, it was that disinclination 
to confidence which is seen between near kindred, that fam¬ 
ily repulsion which spoils the most sacred relations of our 
lives; partly, it was the desire to surprise his father with a 
great joy. He did not see that it would have been better 
to soothe the interval with a new hope, and prevent the de¬ 
lirium of a too sudden elation. 

At the time of Maggie’s first meeting with Philip, Tom 
had already nearly a hundred and fifty pounds of his own 
capital; and while they were walking by the evening light 
in the Red Deeps, he, by the same evening light, was riding 
into Laceham, proud of being on his first journey on be¬ 
half of Guest & Co., and revolving in his mind all the 
chances that by the end of another year he should have 
doubled his gains, lifted off the obloquy of debt from his 


WHEAT AND TARES 


353 


father’s name, and perhaps — for he should be twenty-one 
— have got a new start for himself, on a higher platform of 
employment. Did he not deserve it? He was quite sure 
that he did. 


CHAPTER III 

THE WAVERING BALANCE 

I SAID that Maggie went home that evening from the 
Red Deeps with a mental conflict already begun. You 
have seen clearly enough, in her interview with Philip, what 
that conflict was. Here suddenly was an opening in the rocky 
wall which shut in the narrow valley of humiliation, where 
all her prospect was the remote, unfathomed sky; and some 
of the memory-haunting earthly delights were no longer out 
of her reach. She might have books, converse, affection; 
she might hear tidings of the world from which her mind 
had not yet lost its sense of exile; and it would be a kind¬ 
ness to Philip too, who was pitiable, — clearly not happy. 
And perhaps here was an opportunity indicated for making 
her mind more worthy of its highest service; perhaps the 
noblest, completest devoutness could hardly exist without 
some width of knowledge; must she always live in this re¬ 
signed imprisonment? It was so blameless, so good a thing 
‘ that there should be friendship between her and Philip; the 
motives that forbade it were so unreasonable, so unchris¬ 
tian! But the severe monotonous warning came again and 
again, — that she was losing the simplicity and clearness of 
her life by admitting a ground of concealment; and that, by 
forsaking the simple rule of renunciation, she was throwing 
herself under the seductive guidance of illimitable wants. 
She thought she had won strength to obey the warning be¬ 
fore she allowed herself the next week to turn her steps in 
the evening to the Red Deeps. But while she was resolved 
to say an affectionate farewell to Philip, how she looked for¬ 
ward to that evening walk in the still, fleckered shade of 


354 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


the hollows, away from all that was harsh and unlovely; to 
the affectionate, admiring looks that would meet her; to the 
sense of comradeship that childish memories would give 
to wiser, older talk; to the certainty that Philip would care 
to hear everything she said, which no one else cared for! It 
was a half-hour that it would be very hard to turn her back 
upon, with the sense that there would be no other like it. 
Yet she said what she meant to say; she looked firm as 
well as sad. 

“ Philip, I have made up my mind; it is right that we 
should give each other up, in everything but memory. I 
could not see you without concealment — stay, I know what 
you are going to say, — it is other people’s wrong feelings 
that make concealment necessary; but concealment is bad, 
however it may be caused. I feel that it would be bad for 
me, for us both. And then, if our secret were discovered, 
there would be nothing but misery, — dreadful anger; and 
then we must part after all, and it would be harder, when 
we were used to seeing each other.” 

Philip’s face had flushed, and there was a momentary 
eagerness of expression, as if he had been about to resist this 
decision with all his might. But he controlled himself, and 
said, with assumed calmness, “ Well, Maggie, if we must 
part, let us try and forget it for one half-hour; let us talk 
together a little while, for the last time.” 

He took her hand, and Maggie felt no reason to withdraw 
it; his quietness made her all the more sure she had given 
him great pain, and she wanted to show him how unwillingly 
she had given it. They walked together hand in hand in 
silence. 

“ Let us sit down in the hollow,” said Philip, “ where we 
stood the last time. See how the dog-roses have strewed the 
ground, and spread their opal petals over it.” 

They sat down at the roots of the slanting ash. 

“ I’ve begun my picture of you among the Scotch firs, 
Maggie,” said Philip, “ so you must let me study your face 
a little, while you stay, — since I am not to see it again. 
Please turn your head this way.” 


WHEAT AND TARES 


355 


This was said in an entreating voice, and it would have 
been very hard of Maggie to refuse. The full, lustrous face, 
with the bright black coronet, looked down like that of a 
divinity well pleased to be worshipped, on the pale-hued, 
small-featured face that was turned up to it. 

“ I shall be sitting for my second portrait, then,” she said, 
smiling. “ Will it be larger than the other? ” 

“ Oh yes, much larger. It is an oil-painting. You will 
look like a tall Hamadryad, dark and strong and noble, just 
issued from one of the fir-trees, when the stems are casting 
their afternoon shadows on the grass.” 

“ You seem to think more of painting than of anything 
now, Philip ? ” 

“ Perhaps I do,” said Philip, rather sadly; “ but I think of 
too many things, — sow all sorts of seeds, and get no great 
harvest from any one of them. I’m cursed with susceptibil¬ 
ity in every direction, and effective faculty in none. I care 
for painting and music; I care for classic literature, and 
mediaeval literature, and modern literature; I flutter all 
ways, and fly in none.” 

“ But surely that is a happiness to have so many tastes, 

— to enjoy so many beautiful things, when they are within 
your reach,” said Maggie, musingly. “ It always seemed to 
me a sort of clever stupidity only to have one sort of talent, 

— almost like a carrier-pigeon.” 

“ It might be a happiness to have many tastes if I were 
like other men,” said Philip, bitterly. “ I might get some 
power and distinction by mere mediocrity, as they do; at 
least I should get those middling satisfactions which make 
men contented to do without great ones. I might think 
society at St. Ogg’s agreeable then. But nothing could make 
life worth the purchase-money of pain to me, but some fac¬ 
ulty that would lift me above the dead level of provincial 
existence. Yes, there is one thing, — a passion answers as 
well as a faculty.” 

Maggie did not hear the last words; she was struggling 
against the consciousness that Philip’s words had set her 
own discontent vibrating again as it used to do. 


356 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


“ I understand what you mean,” she said, “ though I know 
so much less than you do. I used to think I could never bear 
life if it kept on being the same every day, and I must al¬ 
ways be doing things of no consequence, and never know 
anything greater. But, dear Philip, I think we are only 
like children, that some one who is wiser is taking care of. 
Is it not right to resign ourselves entirely, whatever may be 
denied us? I have found great peace in that for the last 
two or three years, even joy in subduing my own will.” 

“ Yes, Maggie,” said Philip, vehemently; “and you are 
shutting yourself up in a narrow, self-delusive fanaticism, 
which is only a way of escaping pain by starving into dul- 
ness all the highest powers of your nature. Joy and peace 
are not resignation; resignation is the willing endurance of 
a pain that is not allayed, that you don’t expect to be 
allayed. Stupefaction is not resignation; and it is stupe¬ 
faction to remain in ignorance, — to shut up all the avenues 
by which the life of your fellow-men might become known 
to you. I am not resigned; I am not sure that life is long 
enough to learn that lesson. You are not resigned; you are 
only trying to stupefy yourself.” 

Maggie’s lips trembled; she felt there was some truth in 
what Philip said, and yet there was a deeper consciousness 
that, for any immediate application it had to her conduct, 
it was no better than falsity. Her double impression corre¬ 
sponded to the double impulse of the speaker. Philip seri¬ 
ously believed what he said, but he said it with vehemence 
because it made an argument against the resolution that op¬ 
posed his wishes. But Maggie’s face, made more childlike 
by the gathering tears, touched him with a tenderer, less 
egoistic feeling. He took her hand and said gently: 

“ Don’t let us think of such things in this short half-hour, 
Maggie. Let us only care about being together. We shall 
be friends in spite of separation. We shall always think of 
each other. I shall be glad to live as long as you are alive, 
because I shall think there may always come a time when 
I can — when you will let me help you in some way.” 

“ What a dear, good brother you would have been, Philip,” 


WHEAT AND TARES 


357 


said Maggie, smiling through the haze of tears. “ I think 
you would have made as much fuss about me, and been as 
pleased for me to love you, as would have satisfied even me. 
You would have loved me well enough to bear with me, and 
forgive me everything. That was what I always longed that 
Tom should do. I was never satisfied with a little of any¬ 
thing. That is why it is better for me to do without earthly 
happiness altogether. I never felt that I had enough music, 
— I wanted more instruments playing together; I wanted 
voices to be fuller and deeper. Do you ever sing now, 
Philip ? ” she added abruptly, as if she had forgotten what 
went before. 

“ Yes,” he said, “ every day, almost. But my voice is only 
middling, like everything else in me.” 

“ Oh, sing me something, — just one song. I may listen 
to that before I go, — something you used to sing at Lorton 
on a Saturday afternoon, when we had the drawing-room all 
to ourselves, and I put my apron over my head to listen.” 

“ 1 know,” said Philip; and Maggie buried her face in her 
hands while he sang sotto voce, “ Love in her eyes sits play¬ 
ing,” and then he said, “ That’s it, isn’t it? ” 

“ Oh, no, I won’t stay,” said Maggie, starting up. “ It will 
only haunt me. Let us walk, Philip. I must go home.” 

She moved away, so that he was obliged to rise and follow 
her. 

“ Maggie,” he said, in a tone of remonstrance, “ don’t per¬ 
sist in this wilful, senseless privation. It makes me wretched 
to see you benumbing and cramping your nature in this way. 
You were so full of life when you were a child; I thought 
you would be a brilliant woman, — all wit and bright imagi¬ 
nation. And it flashes out in your face still, until you draw 
that veil of dull quiescence over it.” 

“ Why do you speak so bitterly to me, Philip ? ” said 
Maggie. 

“Because I foresee it will not end well; you can never 
carry on this self-torture.” 

“ I shall have strength given me,” said Maggie, tremu¬ 
lously. 


358 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


“ No, you will not, Maggie; no one has strength given to 
do what is unnatural. It is mere cowardice to seek safety 
in negations. No character becomes strong in that way. 
You will be thrown into the world some day, and then every 
rational satisfaction of your nature that you deny now will 
assault you like a savage appetite.” 

Maggie started and paused, looking at Philip with alarm 
in her face. 

“ Philip, how dare you shake me in this way? You are a 
tempter.” 

“No, I am not; but love gives insight, Maggie, and in¬ 
sight often gives foreboding. Listen to me, — let me supply 
you with books; do let me see you sometimes, —- be your 
brother and teacher, as you said at Lorton. It is less wrong 
that you should see me than that you should be committing 
this long suicide.” 

Maggie felt unable to speak. She shook her head and 
walked on in silence, till they came to the end of the Scotch 
firs, and she put out her hand in sign of parting. 

“ Do you banish me from this place forever, then, Maggie ? 
Surely I may come and walk in it sometimes ? If I meet you 
by chance, there is no concealment in that? ” 

It is the moment when our resolution seems about to be¬ 
come irrevocable — when the fatal iron gates are about to 
close upon us — that tests our strength. Then, after hours 
of clear reasoning and firm conviction, we snatch at any 
sophistry that will nullify our long struggles, and bring us 
the defeat that we love better than victory, 
j Maggie felt her heart leap at this subterfuge of Philip’s, 
and there passed over her face that almost imperceptible 
shock which accompanies any relief. He saw it, and they 
parted in silence. 

Philip’s sense of the situation was too complete for him 
not to be visited with glancing fears lest he had been inter¬ 
vening too presumptuously in the action of Maggie’s con¬ 
science, perhaps for a selfish end. But no! — he persuaded 
himself his end was not selfish. He had little hope that 
Maggie would ever return the strong feeling he had for her; 


WHEAT AND TARES 


359 


and it must be better for Maggie’s future life, when these 
petty family obstacles to her freedom had disappeared, that 
the present should not be entirely sacrificed, and that she 
should have some opportunity of culture, — some inter¬ 
change with a mind above the vulgar level of those she was 
now condemned to live with. If we only look far enough 
off for the consequence of our actions, we can always find 
some point in the combination of results by which those 
actions can be justified; by adopting the point of view of a 
Providence who arranges results, or of a philosopher who 
traces them, we shall find it possible to obtain perfect com¬ 
placency in choosing to do what is most agreeable to us in 
the present moment. And it was in this way that Philip 
justified his subtle efforts to overcome Maggie’s true prompt¬ 
ing against a concealment that would introduce doubleness 
into her own mind, and might cause new misery to those 
who had the primary natural claim on her. But there was 
a surplus of passion in him that made him half independent 
of justifying motives. His longing to see Maggie, and make 
an element in her life, had in it some of that savage impulse 
to snatch an offered joy which springs from a life in which 
the mental and bodily constitution have made pain pre¬ 
dominate. He had not his full share in the common good 
of men; he could not even pass muster with the insignificant, 
but must be singled out for pity, and excepted from what 
was a matter of course with others. Even to Maggie he was 
an exception; it was clear that the thought of his being her 
lover had never entered her mind. 

Do not think too hardly of Philip. Ugly and deformed 
people have great need of unusual virtues, because they are 
likely to be extremely uncomfortable without them; but the 
theory that unusual virtues spring by a direct consequence 
out of personal disadvantages, as animals get thicker wool in 
severe climates, is perhaps a little overstrained. The temp¬ 
tations of beauty are much dwelt upon, but I fancy they 
only bear the same relation to those of ugliness, as the 
temptation to excess at a feast, where the delights are 
varied for eye and ear as well as palate, bears to the temp- 


360 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


tations that assail the desperation of hunger. Does not the 
Hunger Tower stand as the type of the utmost trial to what 
is human in us? 

Philip had never been soothed by that mother’s love 
which flows out to us in the greater abundance because our 
need is greater, which clings to us the more tenderly be¬ 
cause we are less likely to be winners in the game of life; 
and the sense of his father’s affection and indulgence toward 
him was marred by the keener perception of his father’s 
faults. Kept aloof from all practical life as Philip had been, 
and by nature half feminine in sensitiveness, he had some 
of the woman’s intolerant repulsion toward worldliness and 
the deliberate pursuit of sensual enjoyment; and this one 
strong natural tie in his life, — his relation as a son, — was 
like an aching limb to him. Perhaps there is inevitably 
something morbid in a human being who is in any way un¬ 
favorably excepted from ordinary conditions, until the good 
force has had time to triumph; and it has rarely had time for 
that at two-and-twenty. That force was present in Philip 
in much strength, but the sun himself looks feeble through 
the morning mists. 


CHAPTER IV 

ANOTHER LOVE-SCENE 

E ARLY in the following April, nearly a year after that 
dubious parting you have just witnessed, you may, if 
you like, again see Maggie entering the Red Deeps through 
the group of Scotch firs. But it is early afternoon and not 
evening, and the edge of sharpness in the spring air makes 
her draw her large shawl close about her and trip along 
rather quickly; though she looks round, as usual, that she 
may take in the sight of her beloved trees. There is a more 
eager, inquiring look in her eyes than there was last June, 
and a smile is hovering about her lips, as if some playful 


WHEAT AND TARES 361 

speech were awaiting the right hearer. The hearer was not 
long in appearing. 

u Take back your Corinne” said Maggie, drawing a book 
from under her shawl. “ You were right in telling me she 
would do me no good; but you were wrong in thinking I 
should wish to be like her.” 

“ Wouldn’t you really like to be a tenth Muse, then, 
Maggie? ” said Philip, looking up in her face as we look at 
a first parting in the clouds that promises us a bright heaven 
once more. 

“ Not at all,” said Maggie, laughing. “ The Muses were 
uncomfortable goddesses* I think, — obliged always to carry 
rolls and musical instruments about with them. If I car¬ 
ried a harp in this climate, you know, I must have a green 
baize cover for it; and I should be sure to leave it behind 
me by mistake.” 

“ You agree with me in not liking Corinne, then? ” 

“ I didn’t finish the book,” said Maggie. “ As soon as I 
came to the blond-haired young lady reading in the park, I 
shut it up, and determined to read no further. I foresaw 
that that light-complexioned girl would win away all the 
love from Corinne and make her miserable. I’m determined 
to read no more books where the blond-haired women carry 
away all the happiness. I should begin to have a prejudice 
against them. If you could give me some story, now, where 
the dark woman triumphs, it would restore the balance. I 
want to avenge Rebecca and Flora Maclvor and Minna, 
and all the rest of the dark unhappy ones. Since you are 
my tutor, you ought to preserve my mind from prejudices; 
you are always arguing against prejudices.” 

“ Well, perhaps you will avenge the dark women in your 
own person, and carry away all the love from your cousin 
Lucy. She is sure to have some handsome young man of 
St. Ogg’s at her feet now; and you have only to shine upon 
him, — your fair little cousin will be quite quenched in 
your beams.” 

“ Philip, that is not pretty of you, to apply my nonsense 
to anything real,” said Maggie, looking hurt. “ As if I, with 


362 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


my old gowns and want of all accomplishments, could be a 
rival of dear little Lucy, — who knows and does all sorts 
of charming things, and is ten times prettier than I am, — 
even if I were odious and base enough to wish to be her 
rival. Besides, I never go to aunt Deane’s when any one is 
there; it is only because dear Lucy is good, and loves me, 
that she comes to see me, and will have me go to see her 
sometimes.” 

“ Maggie,” said Philip, with surprise, “ it is not like you 
to take playfulness literally. You must have been in St. 
Ogg’s this morning, and brought away a slight infection of 
dulness.” 

“ Well,” said Maggie, smiling, “ if you meant that for a 
joke, it was a poor one; but I thought it was a very good 
reproof. I thought you wanted to remind me that I am 
vain, and wish every one to admire me most. But it isn’t for 
that that I’m jealous for the dark women, — not because 
I’m dark myself; it’s because I always care the most about 
the unhappy people. If the blond girl were forsaken, I 
should like her best. I always take the side of the rejected 
lover in the stories.” 

“ Then you would never have the heart to reject one your¬ 
self, should you, Maggie? ” said Philip, flushing a little. 

“ I don’t know,” said Maggie, hesitatingly. Then with a 
bright smile, “ I think perhaps I could if he were very con¬ 
ceited; and yet, if he got extremely humiliated afterward, I 
should relent.” 

“ I’ve often wondered, Maggie,” Philip said, with some 
effort, “ whether you wouldn’t really be more likely to love 
a man that other women were not likely to love.” 

“ That would depend on what they didn’t like him for,” 
said Maggie, laughing. “ He might be very disagreeable. 
He might look at me through an eye-glass stuck in his eye, 
making a hideous face, as young Torry does. I should think 
other women are not fond of that; but I never felt any 
pity for young Torry. I’ve never any pity for conceited 
people, because I think they carry their comfort about with 
them.” 


WHEAT AND TARES 


363 


“ But suppose, Maggie, — suppose it was a man who was 
not conceited, who felt he had nothing to be conceited 
about; who had been marked from childhood for a peculiar 
kind of suffering, and to whom you were the day-star of his 
life; who loved you, worshipped you, so entirely that he felt 
it happiness enough for him if you would let him see you at 
rare moments-” 

Philip paused with a pang of dread lest his confession 
should cut short this very happiness, — a pang of the same 
dread that had kept his love mute through long months. A 
rush of self-consciousness told him that he was besotted to 
have said all this. Maggie’s manner this morning had been 
as unconstrained and indifferent as ever. 

But she was *not looking indifferent now. Struck with the 
unusual emotion in Philip’s tone, she had turned quickly to 
look at him; and as he went on speaking, a great change 
came over her face, — a flush and slight spasm of the fea¬ 
tures, such as we see in people who hear some news that will 
require them to readjust their conceptions of the past. She 
was quite silent, and walking on toward the trunk of a fallen 
tree, she sat down, as if she had no strength to spare for her 
muscles. She was trembling. 

“ Maggie,” said Philip, getting more and more alarmed in 
every fresh moment of silence, “ I was a fool to say it; for¬ 
get that I’ve said it. I shall be contented if things can be 
as they were.” 

The distress with which he spoke urged Maggie to say 
something. “I'am so surprised, Philip; I had not thought 
of it.” And the effort to say this brought the tears down 
too. 

“ Has it made you hate me, Maggie ? ” said Philip, impetu¬ 
ously. “ Do you think I’m a presumptuous fool? ” 

“Oh, Philip!” said Maggie, “how can you think I 
have such feelings? As if I were not grateful for any love. 
But — but I had never thought of your being my 
lover. It seemed so far off — like a dream — only like 
one of the stories one imagines — that I should ever nave a 
lover.” 


364 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


“ Then can you bear to think of me as your lover, Mag¬ 
gie ? ” said Philip, seating himself by her, and taking her 
hand, in the elation of a sudden hope. “ Do you love me? ” 

Maggie turned rather pale; this direct question seemed 
not easy to answer. But her eyes met Philip’s, which were 
in this moment liquid and beautiful with beseeching love. 
She spoke with hesitation, yet with sweet, simple, girlish 
tenderness. 

“ I think I could hardly love any one better; there is noth¬ 
ing but what I love you for.” She paused a little while, and 
then added: “ But it will be better for us not to say any 
more about it, won’t it, dear Philip? You know we couldn’t 
even be friends, if our friendship were discovered. I have 
never felt that I was right in giving way about seeing you, 
though it has been so precious to me in some ways; and now 
the fear comes upon me strongly again, that it will lead to 
evil.” 

“ But no evil has come, Maggie; and if you had been 
guided by that fear before, you would only have lived 
through another dreary, benumbing year, instead of reviv¬ 
ing into your real self.” 

Maggie shook her head. “ It has been very sweet, I know, 

— all the talking together, and the books, and the feeling 
that I had the walk to look forward to, when I could tell you 
the thoughts that had come into my head while I was away 
from you. But it has made me restless; it has made me 
think a great deal about the world; and I have impatient 
thoughts again, — I get weary of my home; and then it cuts 
me to the heart afterward, that I should ever have felt 
weary of my father and mother. I think what you call 
being benumbed was better — better for me — for then my 
selfish desires were benumbed.” 

Philip had risen again, and was walking backward and for¬ 
ward impatiently. 

“ No, Maggie, you have wrong ideas of self-conquest, as 
I’ve often told you. What you call self-conquest — blind¬ 
ing and deafening yourself to all but one train of impressions 

— is only the culture of monomania in a nature like yours.” 


WHEAT AND TARES 365 

He had spoken with some irritation, but now he sat down 
by her again and took her hand. 

“ Don’t think of the past now, Maggie; think only of our 
love. If you can really cling to me with all your heart, every 
obstacle will be overcome in time; we need only wait. I 
can live on hope. Look at me, Maggie; tell me again it is 
possible for you to love me. Don’t look away from me to 
that cloven tree; it is a bad omen.” 

She turned her large dark glance upon him with a sad 
smile. 

“ Come, Maggie, say one kind word, or else you were 
better to me at Lorton. You asked me if I should like you 
to kiss me, — don’t you remember ? — and you promised to 
kiss me when you met me again. You never kept the 
promise.” 

The recollection of that childish time came as a sweet 
relief to Maggie. It made the present moment less strange 
to her. She kissed him almost as simply and quietly as she 
had done when she was twelve years old. Philip’s eyes 
flashed with delight, but his next words were words of 
discontent. 

“ You don’t seem happy enough, Maggie; you are forcing 
yourself to say you love me, out of pity.” 

“ No, Philip,” said Maggie, shaking her head, in her old 
childish way; “ I’m telling you the truth. It is all new and 
strange to me; but I don’t think I could love any one bet¬ 
ter than I love you. I should like always to live with you 
— to make you happy. I have always been happy when I 
have been with you. There is only one thing I will not do 
for your sake; I will never do anything to wound my father. 
You must never ask that from me.” 

“ No, Maggie, I will ask nothing; I will bear everything; 
I’ll wait another year only for a kiss, if you will only give 
me the first place in your heart.” 

“ No,” said Maggie, smiling, “ I won’t make you wait so 
long as that.” But then, looking serious again, she added, as 
she rose from her seat, — 

“ But what would your own father say, Philip ? Oh, it is 


366 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


quite impossible we can ever be more than friends, — 
brother and sister in secret, as we have been. Let us give up 
thinking of everything else.” 

“ No, Maggie, I can't give you up, — unless you are de¬ 
ceiving me; unless you really only care for me as if I were 
your brother. Tell me the truth.” 

“ Indeed I do, Philip. What happiness have I ever had 
so great as being with you, — since I was a little girl, — the 
days Tom was good to me? And your mind is a sort of 
world to me; you can tell me all I want to know. I think 
I should never be tired of being with you.” 

They were walking hand in hand, looking at each other; 
Maggie, indeed, was hurrying along, for she felt it time 
to be gone. But the sense that their parting was near 
made her more anxious lest she should have unintentionally 
left some painful impression on Philip's mind. It was 
one of those dangerous moments when speech is at once 
sincere and deceptive; when feeling, rising high above its 
average depth, leaves floodmarks which are never reached 
again. 

They stopped to part among the Scotch firs. 

“ Then my life will be filled with hope, Maggie, and I shall 
be happier than other men, in spite of all? We do belong 
to each other — for always — whether we are apart or 
together ? ” 

“ Yes, Philip; I should like never to part; I should like to 
make your life very happy.” 

“ I am waiting for something else. I wonder whether it 
will come.” 

Maggie smiled, with glistening tears, and then stooped 
her tall head to kiss the pale face that was full of pleading, 
timid love, — like a woman's. 

She had a moment of real happiness then, — a moment of 
belief that, if there were sacrifice in this love, it was all the 
richer and more satisfying. 

She turned away and hurried home, feeling that in the 
hour since she had trodden this road before, a new era had 
begun for her. The tissue of vague dreams must now get 


WHEAT AND TARES 


367 


narrower and narrower, and all the threads of thought and 
emotion be gradually absorbed in the woof of her actual 
daily life. 


CHAPTER V 

THE CLOVEN TREE 

S ECRETS are rarely betrayed or discovered according to 
any programme our fear has sketched out. Fear is al¬ 
most always haunted by terrible dramatic scenes, which 
recur in spite of the best-argued probabilities against them; 
and during a year that Maggie had had the burthen of con¬ 
cealment on her mind, the possibility of discovery had con¬ 
tinually presented itself under the form of a sudden meet¬ 
ing with her father or Tom when she was walking with 
Philip in the Red Deeps. She was aware that this was not 
one of the most likely events; but it was the scene that most 
completely symbolized her inward dread. Those slight in¬ 
direct suggestions which are dependent on apparently trivial 
coincidences and incalculable states of mind, are the favorite 
machinery of Fact, but are not the stuff in which Imagina¬ 
tion is apt to work. 

Certainly one of the persons about whom Maggie’s fears 
were furthest from troubling themselves was her aunt Pullet, 
on whom, seeing that she did not live in St. Ogg’s, and was 
neither sharp-eyed nor sharp-tempered, it would surely have 
been quite whimsical of them to fix rather than on aunt 
Glegg. And yet the channel of fatality — the pathway of 
the lightning — was no other than aunt Pullet. She did not 
live at St. Ogg’s, but the road from Garum Firs lay by the 
Red Deeps, at the end opposite that by which Maggie 
entered. 

The day after Maggie’s last meeting with Philip, being a 
Sunday on which Mr. Pullet was bound to appear in funeral 
hatband and scarf at St. Ogg’s church, Mrs. Pullet made this 
the occasion of dining with sister Glegg, and taking tea with 


368 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


poor sister Tulliver. Sunday was the one day in the week 
on which Tom was at home in the afternoon; and to-day 
the brighter spirits he had been in of late had flowed over 
in unusually cheerful open chat with his father, and in the 
invitation, “ Come, Magsie, you come too! ” when he strolled 
out with his mother in the garden to see the advancing 
cherry-blossoms. He had been better pleased with Maggie 
since she had been less odd and ascetic; he was even getting 
rather proud of her; several persons had remarked in his 
hearing that his sister was a very fine girl. To-day there 
was a peculiar brightness in her face, due in reality to an 
undercurrent of excitement, which had as much doubt and 
pain as pleasure in it; but it might pass for a sign of 
happiness. 

“ You look very well, my dear,” said aunt Pullet, shaking 
her head sadly, as they sat round the tea-table. “ I niver 
thought your girl hid be so good-looking, Bessy. But you 
must wear pink, my dear; that blue thing as your aunt Glegg 
gave you turns you into a crowflower. Jane never was tasty. 
Why don’t you wear that gown o’ mine ? ” 

“ It is so pretty and so smart, aunt. I think it’s too 
showy for me, — at least for my other clothes, that I must 
wear with it.” 

“ To be sure, it ’ud be unbecoming if it wasn’t well known 
you’ve got them belonging to you as can afford to give you 
such things when they’ve done with ’em themselves. It 
stands to reason I must give my own niece clothes now and 
then, — such things as I buy every year, and never wear 
anything out. And as for Lucy, there’s no giving to her, for 
she’s got everything o’ the choicest; sister Deane may well 
hold her head up, — though she looks dreadful yallow, poor 
thing — I doubt this liver complaint ’ull carry her off. 
That’s what this new vicar, this Dr. Kenn, said in the 
funeral sermon to-day.” 

“ Ah, he’s a wonderful preacher, by all account, — isn’t he, 
Sophy? ” said Mrs. Tulliver. 

“ Why, Lucy had got a collar on this blessed day,” con¬ 
tinued Mrs. Pullet, with her eyes fixed in a ruminating man- 


WHEAT AND TARES 369 

ner, “ as I don’t say I haven’t got as good, but I must look 
out my best to match it.” 

“ Miss Lucy’s called the bell o’ St. Ogg’s, they say; that’s 
a cur’ous word,” observed Mr. Pullet, on whom the mys¬ 
teries of etymology sometimes fell with an oppressive weight. 

“ Pooh! ” said Mr. Tulliver, jealous for Maggie, “ she’s a 
small thing, not much of a figure. But fine feathers make 
fine birds. I see nothing to admire so much in those diminu¬ 
tive women; they look silly by the side o’ the men, — out o’ 
proportion. When I chose my wife, I chose her the right 
size, — neither too little nor too big.” 

The poor wife, with her withered beauty, smiled com¬ 
placently. 

“ But the men aren’t all big,” said uncle Pullet, not with¬ 
out some self-reference; “ a young fellow may be good- 
looking and yet not be a six-foot, like Master Tom here.” 

“ Ah, it’s poor talking about littleness and bigness, — any¬ 
body may think it’s a mercy they’re straight,” said aunt 
Pullet. “ There’s that mismade son o’ Lawyer Wakem’s, I 
saw him at church to-day. Dear, dear! to think o’ the 
property he’s like to have; and they say he’s very queer 
and lonely, doesn’t like much company. I shouldn’t wonder 
if he goes out of his mind; for we never come along the road 
but he’s a-scrambling out o’ the trees and brambles at the 
Red Deeps.” 

This wide statement, by which Mrs. Pullet represented 
the fact that she had twice seen Philip at the spot indicated, 
produced an effect on Maggie which was all the stronger be¬ 
cause Tom sate opposite her, and she was intensely anxious 
to look indifferent. At Philip’s name she had blushed, and 
the blush deepened every instant from consciousness, until 
the mention of the Red Deeps made her feel as if the whole 
secret were betrayed, and she dared not even hold her tea¬ 
spoon lest she should show how she trembled. She sat with 
her hands clasped under the table, not daring to look round. 
Happily, her father was seated on the same side with her¬ 
self, beyond her uncle Pullet, and could not see her face 
without stooping forward. Her mother’s voice brought the 


370 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


first relief, turning the conversation; for Mrs. Tulliver was 
always alarmed when the name of Wakem was mentioned 
in her husband’s presence. Gradually Maggie recovered 
composure enough to look up; her eyes met Tom’s, but he 
turned away his head immediately; and she went to bed 
that night wondering if he had gathered any suspicion from 
her confusion. Perhaps not; perhaps he would think it was 
only her alarm at her aunt’s mention of Wakem before her 
father; that was the interpretation her mother had put on 
it. To her father, Wakem was like a disfiguring disease, of 
which he was obliged to endure the consciousness, but was 
exasperated to have the existence recognized by others; and 
no amount of sensitiveness in her about her father could be 
surprising, Maggie thought. 

But Tom was too keen-sighted to rest satisfied with such 
an interpretation; he had seen clearly enough that there 
was something distinct from anxiety about her father in 
Maggie’s excessive confusion. In trying to recall all the 
details that could give shape to his suspicions, he remem¬ 
bered only lately hearing his mother scold Maggie for walk¬ 
ing in the Red Deeps when the ground was wet, and bring¬ 
ing home shoes clogged with red soil; still Tom, retaining 
all his old repulsion for Philip’s deformity, shrank from at¬ 
tributing to his sister the probability of feeling more than a 
friendly interest in such an unfortunate exception to the 
common run of men. Tom’s was a nature which had a sort 
of superstitious repugnance to everything exceptional. A 
love for a deformed man would be odious in any woman, in 
a sister intolerable. But if she had been carrying on any 
kind of intercourse whatever with Philip, a stop must be 
put to it at once; she was disobeying her father’s strongest 
feelings and her brother’s express commands, besides com¬ 
promising herself by secret meetings. He left home the 
next morning in that watchful state of mind which turns 
the most ordinary course of things into pregnant coinci¬ 
dences. 

That afternoon, about half-past three o’clock, Tom was 
standing on the wharf, talking with Bob Jakin about the 


WHEAT AND TARES 371 

probability of the good ship Adelaide coming in, in a day or 
two, with results highly important to both of them. 

“ Eh/’ said Bob, parenthetically, as he looked over the 
fields on the other side of the river, “ there goes that crooked 
young Wakem. I know him or his shadder as far off as I 
can see 'em; I’m allays lighting on him o’ that side the 
river.” 

A sudden thought seemed to have darted through Tom’s 
mind. “ I must go, Bob,” he said; “ I’ve something to at¬ 
tend to,” hurrying off to the warehouse, where he left notice 
for some one to take his place; he was called away home on 
peremptory business. 

The swiftest pace and the shortest road took him to the 
gate, and he was pausing to open it deliberately, that he 
might walk into the house with an appearance of perfect 
composure, when Maggie came out at the front door in bon¬ 
net and shawl. His conjecture was fulfilled, and he waited 
for her at the gate. She started violently when she saw 
him. 

“ Tom, how is it you are come home ? Is there anything 
the matter? ” Maggie spoke in a low, tremulous voice. 

“ I’m come to walk with you to the Red Deeps, and meet 
Philip Wakem,” said Tom, the central fold in his brow, 
which had become habitual with him, deepening as he spoke. 

Maggie stood helpless, pale and cold. By some means, 
then, Tom knew everything. At last she said, “ I’m not go¬ 
ing,” and turned round. 

“Yes, you are; but I want to speak to you first. Where 
is my father ? ” 

“ Out on horseback.” 

“ And my mother ? ” 

“ In the yard, I think, with the poultry.” 

“ I can go in, then, without her seeing me ? ” 

They walked in together, and Tom, entering the parlor, 
said to Maggie, “ Come in here.” 

She obeyed, and he closed the door behind her. 

“ Now, Maggie, tell me this instant everything that has 
passed between you and Philip Wakem.” 


372 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


“ Does my father know anything ? ” said Maggie, still 
trembling. 

“ No/’ said Tom, indignantly. “ But he shall know, if you 
attempt to use deceit toward me any further.” 

“ I don’t wish to use deceit,” said Maggie, flushing into 
resentment at hearing this word applied to her conduct. 

“ Tell me the whole truth, then.” • 

“ Perhaps you know it.” 

“ Never mind whether I know it or not. Tell me exactly 
what has happened, or my father shall know everything.” 

“ I tell it for my father’s sake, then.” 

“ Yes, it becomes you to profess affection for your father, 
when you have despised his strongest feelings.” 

“ You never do wrong, Tom,” said Maggie, tauntingly. 

“ Not if I know it,” answered Tom, with proud sincerity. 
“ But I have nothing to say to you beyond this: tell me what 
has passed between you and Philip Wakem. When did you 
first meet him in the Red Deeps ? ” 

“ A year ago,” said Maggie, quietly. Tom’s severity gave 
her a certain fund of defiance, and kept her sense of error in 
abeyance. “ You need ask me no more questions. We have 
been friendly a year. We have met and walked together 
often. He has lent me books.” 

“ Is that all? ” said Tom, looking straight at her with his 
frown. 

Maggie paused a moment; then, determined to make 
an end of Tom’s right to accuse her of deceit, she said 
haughtily: 

“ No, not quite all. On Saturday he told me that he 
loved me. I didn’t think of it before then; I had only 
thought of him as an old friend.” 

“ And you encouraged him? ” said Tom, with an expres¬ 
sion of disgust. 

“ I told him that I loved him too.” 

Tom was silent a few moments, looking on the ground and 
frowning, with his hands in his pockets. At last he looked 
up and said coldly, — 

“ Now, then, Maggie, there are but two courses for you 


WHEAT AND TARES 


373 


to take, — either you vow solemnly to me, with your hand 
on my father’s Bible, that you will never have another 
meeting or speak another word in private with Philip 
Wakem, or you refuse, and I tell my father everything; and 
this month, when by my exertions he might be made happy 
once more, you will cause him the blow of knowing that 
you are a disobedient, deceitful daughter, who throws away 
her own respectability by clandestine meetings with the son 
of a man that has helped to ruin her father. Choose! ” 
Tom ended with cold decision, going up to the large Bible, 
drawing it forward, and opening it at the fly-leaf, where the 
writing was. 

It was a crushing alternative to Maggie. 

“ Tom,” she said, urged out of pride into pleading, “ don’t 
ask me that. I will promise you to give up all intercourse 
with Philip, if you will let me see him once, or even only 
write to him and explain everything, — to give it up as long 
as it would ever cause any pain to my father. I feel some¬ 
thing for Philip too. He is not happy.” 

“ I don’t wish to hear anything of your feelings; I have 
said exactly what I mean. Choose, and quickly, lest my 
mother should come in.” 

“ If I give you my word, that will be as strong a bond to 
me as if I laid my hand on the Bible. I don’t require that 
to bind me.” 

“ Do what I require,” said Tom. “ I can’t trust you, 
Maggie. There is no consistency in you. Put your hand on 
this Bible, and say, ‘ I renounce all private speech and inter¬ 
course with Philip Wakem from this time forth.’ Else you 
will bring shame on us all, and grief on my father; and what 
is the use of my exerting myself and giving up everything 
else for the sake of paying my father’s debts, if you are to 
bring madness and vexation on him, just when he might be 
easy and hold up his head once more? ” 

“ Oh, Tom, will the debts be paid soon ? ” said Maggie, 
clasping her hands, with a sudden flash of joy across her 
wretchedness. 

“ If things turn out as I expect,” said Tom. “ But,” he 


374 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


added, his voice trembling with indignation, “ while I have 
been contriving and working that my father may have some 
peace of mind before he dies, — working for the respectabil¬ 
ity of our family, — you have done all you can to destroy 
both.” 

Maggie felt a deep movement of compunction; for the 
moment, her mind ceased to contend against what she felt 
to be cruel and unreasonable, and in her self-blame she 
justified her brother. 

“Tom,” she said in a low voice, “it was wrong of me; 
but I was so lonely, and I was sorry for Philip. And I think 
enmity and hatred are wicked.” 

“Nonsense! ” said Tom. “Your duty was clear enough. 
Say no more; but promise, in the words I told you.” 

“ I must speak to Philip once more.” 

“ You will go with me now and speak to him.” 

“ I give you my word not to meet him or write to him 
again without your knowledge. That is the only thing I 
will say. I will put my hand on the Bible if you like.” 

“ Say it, then.” 

Maggie laid her hand on the page of manuscript and re¬ 
peated the promise. Tom closed the book, and said, “ Now 
let us go.” 

Not a word was spoken as they walked along. Maggie 
was suffering in anticipation of what Philip was about to 
suffer, and dreading the galling words that would fall on 
him from Tom’s lips; but she felt it was in vain to attempt 
anything but submission. Tom had his terrible clutch on 
her conscience and her deepest dread; she writhed under 
the demonstrable truth of the character he had given to her 
conduct, and yet her whole soul rebelled against it as un¬ 
fair from its incompleteness. He, meanwhile, felt the im¬ 
petus of his indignation diverted toward Philip. He did not 
know how much of an old boyish repulsion and of mere 
personal pride and animosity was concerned in the bitter 
severity of the words by which he meant to do the duty of 
a son and a brother. Tom was not given to inquire subtly 
into his own motives any more than into other matters of 


WHEAT AND TARES 


375 


an intangible kind; he was quite sure that his own motives 
as well as actions were good, else he would have had noth¬ 
ing to do with them. 

Maggie’s only hope was that something might, for the 
first time, have prevented Philip from coming. Then there 
would be delay, — then she might get Tom’s permission to 
write to him. Her heart beat with double violence when 
they got under the Scotch firs. It was the last moment of 
suspense, she thought; Philip always met her soon after she 
got beyond them. But they passed across the more open 
green space, and entered the narrow bushy path by the 
mound. Another turning, and they came so close upon him 
that both Tom and Philip stopped suddenly within a yard 
of each other. There was a moment’s silence, in which 
Philip darted a look of inquiry at Maggie’s face. He saw 
an answer there, in the pale, parted lips, and the terrified 
tension of the large eyes. Her imagination, always rushing 
extravagantly beyond an immediate impression, saw her 
tall, strong brother grasping the feeble Philip bodily, crush¬ 
ing him and trampling on him. 

“ Do you call this acting the part of a man and a gentle¬ 
man, sir? ” Tom said, in a voice of harsh scorn, as soon as 
Philip’s eyes were turned on him again. 

“ What do you mean? ” answered Philip, haughtily. 

“ Mean ? Stand farther from me, lest I should lay hands 
on you, and I’ll tell you what I mean. I mean, taking ad¬ 
vantage of a young girl’s foolishness and ignorance to get 
her to have secret meetings with you. I mean, daring to 
trifle with the respectability of a family that has a good and 
honest name to support.” 

“ I deny that,” interrupted Philip, impetuously. “ I could 
never trifle with anything that affected your sister’s happi¬ 
ness. She is dearer to me than she is to you; I honor her 
more than you can ever honor her; I would give up my life 
to her.” 

“ Don’t talk high-flown nonsense to me, sir! Do you 
mean to pretend that you didn’t know it would be injurious 
to her to meet you here week after week? Do you pretend 


376 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


you had any right to make professions of love to her, even 
if you had been a fit husband for her, when neither her 
father nor your father would ever consent to a marriage 
between you? And you ,— you to try and worm yourself 
into the affections of a handsome girl who is not eighteen, 
and has been shut out from the world by her father’s mis¬ 
fortunes! That’s your crooked notion of honor, is it? I 
call it base treachery; I call it taking advantage of circum¬ 
stances to win what’s too good for you, — what you’d never 
get by fair means.” 

“ It is manly of you to talk in this way to me,” said 
Philip, bitterly, his whole frame shaken by violent emotions. 
“ Giants have an immemorial right to stupidity and insolent 
abuse. You are incapable even of understanding what I 
feel for your sister. I feel so much for her that I could even 
desire to be at friendship with you.” 

“ I should be very sorry to understand your feelings,” said 
Tom, with scorching contempt. “ What I wish is that you 
should understand me, — that I shall take care of my sister, 
and that if you dare to make the least attempt to come near 
her, or to write to her, or to keep the slightest hold on 
her mind, your puny, miserable body, that ought to have 
put some modesty into your mind, shall not protect you. 
I’ll thrash you; I’ll hold you up to public scorn. Who 
wouldn’t laugh at the idea of your turning lover to a fine 
girl? ” 

“ Tom, I will not bear it; I will listen no longer,” Maggie 
burst out, in a convulsed voice. 

“ Stay, Maggie! ” said Philip, making a strong effort to 
speak. Then looking at Tom, “ You have dragged your 
sister here, I suppose, that she may stand by while you 
threaten and insult me. These naturally seemed to you the 
right means to influence me. But you are mistaken. Let 
your sister speak. If she says she is bound to give me up, I 
shall abide by her wishes to the slightest word.” 

“ It was for my father’s sake, Philip,” said Maggie, implor¬ 
ingly. “ Tom threatens to tell my father, and he couldn’t 
bear it; I have promised; I have vowed solemnly, that we 


WHEAT AND TARES 377 

will not have any intercourse without my brother’s knowl¬ 
edge.” 

“ It is enough, Maggie. I shall not change; but I wish 
you to hold yourself entirely free. But trust me; remember 
that I can never seek for anything but good to what belongs 
to you.” 

“ Yes,” said Tom, exasperated by this attitude of Philip’s, 
“ you can talk of seeking good for her and what belongs to 
her now; did you seek her good before? ” 

“ I did, — at some risk, perhaps. But I wished her to 
have a friend for life, — who would cherish her, who would 
do her more justice than a coarse and narrow-minded 
brother, that she has always lavished her affections on.” 

“ Yes, my way of befriending her is different from yours; 
and I’ll tell you what is my way. I’ll save her from dis¬ 
obeying and disgracing her father; I’ll save Her from throw¬ 
ing herself away on you, — from making herself a laughing¬ 
stock, — from being flouted by a man like your father, 
because she’s not good enough for his son. You know well 
enough what sort of justice and cherishing you were pre¬ 
paring for her. I’m not to be imposed upon by fine words; 
I can see what actions mean. Come away, Maggie.” 

He seized Maggie’s right wrist as he spoke, and she put 
out her left hand. Philip clasped it an instant, with one 
eager look, and then hurried away. 

Tom and Maggie walked on in silence for some yards. He 
was still holding her wrist tightly, as if he were compelling 
a culprit from the scene of action. At last Maggie, with a 
violent snatch, drew her hand away, and her pent-up, long- 
gathered irritation burst into utterance. 

“ Don’t suppose that I think you are right, Tom, or that 
I bow to your will. I despise the feelings you have shown 
in speaking to Philip; I detest your insulting, unmanly allu¬ 
sions to his deformity. You have been reproaching other 
people all your life; you have been always sure you your¬ 
self are right. It is because you have not a mind large 
enough to see that there is anything better than your own 
conduct and your own petty aims.” 


378 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


“ Certainly/’ said Tom, coolly. “ I don’t see that your 
conduct is better, or your aims either. If your conduct, and 
Philip Wakem’s conduct, has been right, why are you 
ashamed of its being known? Answer me that. I know 
what I have aimed at in my conduct, and I’ve succeeded; 
pray, what good has your conduct brought to you or any 
one else ? ” 

“ I don’t want to defend myself,” said Maggie, still with 
vehemence: “I know I’ve been wrong, — often, continu¬ 
ally. But yet, sometimes when I have done wrong, it has 
been because I have feelings that you would be the better 
for, if you had them. If you were in fault ever, if you had 
done anything very wrong, I should be sorry for the pain it 
brought you; I should not want punishment to be heaped 
on you. But you have always enjoyed punishing me; you 
have always been hard and cruel to me; even when I was 
a little girl, and always loved you better than any one else 
in the world, you would let me go crying to bed without 
forgiving me. You have no pity; you have no sense of your 
own imperfection and your own sins. It is a sin to be hard; 
it is not fitting for a mortal, for a Christian. You are noth¬ 
ing but a Pharisee. You thank God for nothing but 
your own virtues; you think they are great enough to 
win you everything else. You have not even a vision of 
feelings by the side of which your shining virtues are mere 
darkness! ” 

“ Well,” said Tom, with cold scorn, “ if your feelings are 
so much better than mine, let me see you show them in some 
other way than by conduct that’s likely to disgrace us all, — 
than by ridiculous flights first into one extreme and then 
into another. Pray, how have you shown your love, that 
you talk of, either to me or my father ? By disobeying and 
deceiving us. I have a different way of showing my 
affection.” 

“ Because you are a man, Tom, and have power, and can 
do something in the world.” 

“ Then, if you can do nothing, submit to those that can.” 

“ So I will submit to what I acknowledge and feel to be 


WHEAT AND TARES 


379 


right. I will submit even to what is unreasonable from my 
father, but I will not submit to it from you. You boast of 
your virtues as if they purchased you a right to be cruel 
and unmanly, as you’ve been to-day. Don’t suppose I would 
give up Philip Wakem in obedience to you. The deformity 
you insult would make me cling to him and care for him 
the more.” 

“ Very well; that is your view of things,” said Tom, more 
coldly than ever; “ you need say no more to show me what 
a wide distance there is between us. Let us remember that 
in future, and be silent.” 

Tom went back to St. Ogg’s, to fulfil an appointment 
with his uncle Deane, and receive directions about a journey 
on which he was to set out the next morning. 

Maggie went up to her own room to pour out all that 
indignant remonstrance, against which Tom’s mind was close 
barred, in bitter tears. Then, when the first burst of un¬ 
satisfied anger was gone by, came the recollection of that 
quiet time before the pleasure which had ended in to-day’s 
misery had perturbed the clearness and simplicity of her 
life. She used to think in that time that she had made great 
conquests, and won a lasting stand on serene heights above 
worldly temptations and conflict. And here she was down 
again in the thick of a hot strife with her own and others’ 
passions. Life was not so short, then, and perfect rest was 
not so near as she had dreamed when she was two years 
younger. There was more struggle for her, perhaps more 
falling. If she had felt that she was entirely wrong, and 
that Tom had been entirely right, she could sooner have 
recovered more inward harmony; but now her penitence and 
submission were constantly obstructed by resentment that 
would present itself to her no otherwise than as a just in¬ 
dignation. Her heart bled for Philip; she went on recalling 
the insults that had been flung at him with so vivid a con¬ 
ception of what he had felt under them, that it was almost 
like a sharp bodily pain to her, making her beat the floor 
with her foot, and tighten her fingers on her palm. 

And yet, how was it that she was now and then conscious 


380 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


of a certain dim background of relief in the forced separa¬ 
tion from Philip? Surely it was only because the sense of 
a deliverance from concealment was welcome at any cost. 


CHAPTER VI 

THE HARD-WON TRIUMPH 

T HREE weeks later, when Dorlcote Mill was at its pret¬ 
tiest moment in all the year, — the great chestnuts in 
blossom, and the grass all deep and daisied, — Tom Tulliver 
came home to it earlier than usual in the evening, and as he 
passed over the bridge, he looked with the old deep-rooted 
affection at the respectable red brick house, which always 
seemed cheerful and inviting outside, let the rooms be as 
bare and the hearts as sad as they might inside. There is 
a very pleasant light in Tom’s blue-gray eyes as he glances 
at the house-windows; that fold in his brow never disap¬ 
pears, but it is not unbecoming; it seems to imply a strength 
of will that may possibly be without harshness, when the 
eyes and mouth have their gentlest expression. His firm 
step becomes quicker, and the corners of his mouth rebel 
against the compression which is meant to forbid a smile. 

The eyes in the parlor were not turned toward the bridge 
just then, and the group there was sitting in unexpectant 
silence, — Mr. Tulliver in his arm-chair, tired with a long 
ride, and ruminating with a worn look, fixed chiefly on 
Maggie, who was bending over her sewing while her mother 
was making the tea. 

They all looked up with surprise when they heard the 
well-known foot. 

“ Why, what’s up now, Tom? ” said his father. “ You’re 
a bit earlier than usual.” 

“ Oh, there was nothing more for me to do, so I came 
away. Well, mother! ” 

Tom went up to his mother and kissed her, a sign of un- 


WHEAT AND TARES 


381 


usual good-humor with him. Hardly a word or look had 
passed between him and Maggie in all the three weeks; but 
his usual incommunicativeness at home prevented this from 
being noticeable to their parents. 

“ Father,” said Tom, when they had finished tea, “ do you 
know exactly how much money there is in the tin box? ” 

“ Only a hundred and ninety-three pound,” said Mr. Tul- 
liver. “ You’ve brought less o’ late; but young fellows like 
to have their own way with their money. Though I didn’t 
do as I liked before I was of age.” He spoke with rather 
timid discontent. 

“ Are you quite sure that’s the sum, father? ” said Tom. 
“ I wish you would take the trouble to fetch the tin box 
down. I think you have perhaps made a mistake.” 

“ How should I make a mistake ? ” said his father, sharply. 
“I’ve counted it often enough; but I can fetch it, if you 
won’t believe me.” 

It was always an incident Mr. Tulliver liked, in his gloomy 
life, to fetch the tin box and count the money. 

“ Don’t go out of the room, mother,” said Tom, as he saw 
her moving when his father was gone upstairs. 

“ And isn’t Maggie to go? ” said Mrs. Tulliver; “ because 
somebody must take away the things.” 

“ Just as she likes,” said Tom, indifferently. 

That was a cutting word to Maggie. Her heart had 
leaped with the sudden conviction that Tom was going to 
tell their father the debts could be paid; and Tom would 
have let her be absent when that news was told! But she 
carried away the tray and came back immediately. The 
feeling of injury on her own behalf could not predominate 
at that moment. 

Tom drew to the corner of the table near his father when 
the tin box was set down and opened, and the red evening 
light falling on them made conspicuous the worn, sour 
gloom of the dark-eyed father and the suppressed joy in the 
face of the fair-complexioned son. The mother and Maggie 
sat at the other end of the table, the one in blank patience, 
the other in palpitating expectation. 


382 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


Mr. Tulliver counted out the money, setting it in order 
on the table, and then said, glancing sharply at Tom: 

“ There now! you see I was right enough.” 

He paused, looking at the money with bitter despondency. 

“ There’s more nor than three hundred wanting; it’ll be a 
fine while before 1 can save that. Losing that forty-two 
pound wi’ the corn was a sore job. This world’s been too 
many for me. It’s took four year to lay this by; it’s much 
if I’m above ground for another four year. I must trusten 
to you to pay ’em,” he went on, with a trembling voice, “ if 
you keep i’ the same mind now you’re coming o’ age. But 
you’re like enough to bury me first.” 

He looked up in Tom’s face with a querulous desire for 
some assurance. 

“ No, father,” said Tom, speaking with energetic decision, 
though there was tremor discernible in his voice too, “ you 
will live to see the debts all paid. You shall pay them with 
your own hand.” 

His tone implied something more than mere hopefulness 
or resolution. A slight electric shock seemed to pass through 
Mr. Tulliver, and he kept his eyes fixed on Tom with a look 
of eager inquiry, while Maggie, unable to restrain herself, 
rushed to her father’s side and knelt down by him. Tom 
was silent a little while before he went on. 

“ A good while ago, my uncle Glegg lent me a little money 
to trade with, and that has answered. I have three hundred 
and twenty pounds in the bank.” 

His mother’s arms were round his neck as soon as the last 
words were uttered, and she said, half crying: 

“ Oh, my boy, I knew you’d make iverything right again, 
when you got a man.” 

But his father was silent; the flood of emotion hemmed in 
all power of speech. Both Tom and Maggie were struck 
with fear lest the shock of joy might even be fatal. But 
the blessed relief of tears came. The broad chest heaved, 
the muscles of the face gave way, and the gray-haired man 
burst into loud sobs. The fit of weeping gradually sub¬ 
sided, and he sat quiet, recovering the regularity of his 


WHEAT AND TARES 383 

breathing. At last he looked up at his wife and said, in a 
gentle tone: 

“ Bessy, you must come and kiss me now — the lad 
has made you amends. You’ll see a bit o’ comfort again, 
belike.” 

When she had kissed him, and he had held her hand a 
minute, his thoughts went back to the money. 

“ I wish you’d brought me the money to look at, Tom,” 
he said, fingering the sovereigns on the table; “ I should ha’ 
felt surer.” 

“ You shall see it to-morrow, father,” said Tom. “ My 
uncle Deane has appointed the creditors to meet to-morrow 
at the Golden Lion, and he has ordered a dinner for them 
at two o’clock. My uncle Glegg and he will both be there. 
It was advertised in the ‘ Messenger ’ on Saturday.” 

“ Then Wakem knows on’t! ” said Mr. Tulliver, his eye 
kindling with triumphant fire. “ Ah! ” he went on, with a 
long-drawn guttural enunciation, taking out his snuff-box, 
the only luxury he had left himself, and tapping it with 
something of his old air of defiance. “ I’ll get from under 
his thumb now, though I must leave the old mill. I thought 

I could ha’ held out to die here — but I can’t- We’ve 

got a glass o’ nothing in the house, have we, Bessy? ” 

“ Yes,” said Mrs. Tulliver, drawing out her much-reduced 
bunch of keys, “ there’s some brandy sister Deane brought 
me when I was ill.” 

“ Get it me, then; get it me. I feel a bit weak.” 

“ Tom, my lad,” he said, in a stronger voice, when he had 
taken some brandy-and-water, “ you shall make a speech 
to ’em. I’ll tell ’em it’s you as got the best part o’ the money. 
They’ll see I’m honest at last, and ha’ got an honest son. 
Ah! Wakem ’ud be fine and glad to have a son like mine, — 
a fine straight fellow, — i’stead o’ that poor crooked creatur! 
You’ll prosper i’ the world, my lad; you’ll maybe see the 
day when Wakem and his son ’ull be a round or two below 
you. You’ll like enough be ta’en into partnership, as your 
uncle Deane was before you, — you’re in the right way 
for’t; and then there’s nothing to hinder your getting rich. 


384 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


And if ever you’re rich enough — mind this — try and get 
th’ old mill again.” 

Mr. Tulliver threw himself back in his chair; his mind, 
which had so long been the home of nothing but bitter dis¬ 
content and foreboding, suddenly filled, by the magic of joy, 
with visions of good fortune. But some subtle influence pre¬ 
vented him from foreseeing the good fortune as happening 
to himself. 

“ Shake hands wi’ me, my lad,” he said, suddenly putting 
out his hand. “ It’s a great thing when a man can be proud 
as he’s got a good son. I’ve had that luck.” 

Tom never lived to taste another moment so delicious as 
that; and Maggie couldn’t help forgetting her own griev¬ 
ances. Tom was good; and in the sweet humility that 
springs in us all in moments of true admiration and grati¬ 
tude, she felt that the faults he had to pardon in her had 
never been redeemed, as his faults were. ,She felt no jeal¬ 
ousy this evening that, for the first time, she seemed to be 
thrown into the background in her father’s mind. 

There was much more talk before bedtime. Mr. Tulli¬ 
ver naturally wanted to hear all the particulars of Tom’s 
trading adventures, and he listened with growing excitement 
and delight. He was curious to know what had been said 
on every occasion; if possible, what had been thought; and 
Bob Jakin’s part in the business threw him into peculiar out¬ 
bursts of sympathy with the triumphant knowingness of 
that remarkable packman. Bob’s juvenile history, so far 
as it had come under Mr. Tulliver’s knowledge, was recalled 
with that sense of astonishing promise it displayed, which 
is observable in all reminiscences of the childhood of great 
men. 

It was well that there was this interest of narrative to 
keep under the vague but fierce sense of triumph over 
Wakem, which would otherwise have been the channel his 
joy would have rushed into with dangerous force. Even as 
it was, that feeling from time to time gave threats of its 
ultimate mastery, in sudden bursts of irrelevant exclama¬ 
tion. 


WHEAT AND TARES 


385 


It was long before Mr. Tulliver got to sleep that night; 
and the sleep, when it came, was filled with vivid dreams. 
At half-past five o’clock in the morning, when Mrs. Tulliver 
was already rising, he alarmed her by starting up with a 
sort of smothered shout, and looking round in a bewildered 
way at the walls of the bedroom. 

“What’s the matter, Mr. Tulliver?” said his wife. He 
looked at her, still with a puzzled expression, and said at 
last: 

“ Ah! — I was dreaming — did I make a noise ? — I 
thought I’d got hold of him.” 



CHAPTER VII 

A DAY OF RECKONING 

M R. TULLIVER was an essentially sober man, — able 
to take his glass and not averse to it, but never ex¬ 
ceeding the bounds of moderation. He had naturally an 
active Hotspur temperament, which did not crave liquid fire 
to set it aglow; his impetuosity was usually equal to an ex¬ 
citing occasion without any such reinforcements; and his 
desire for the brandy-and-water implied that the too sudden 


386 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


joy had fallen with a dangerous shock on a frame depressed 
by four years of gloom and unaccustomed hard fare. But 
that first doubtful tottering moment passed, he seemed to 
gather strength with his gathering excitement; and the next 
day, when he was seated at table with his creditors, his eye 
kindling and his cheek flushed with the consciousness that he 
was about to make an honorable figure once more, he looked 
more like the proud, confident, warm-hearted, and warm- 
tempered Tulliver of old times than might have seemed pos¬ 
sible to any one who had met him a week before, riding 
along as had been his wont for the last four years since the 
sense of failure and debt had been upon him, — with his 
head hanging down, casting brief, unwilling looks on those 
who forced themselves on his notice. He made his speech, 
asserting his honest principles with his old confident eager¬ 
ness, alluding to the rascals and the luck that had been 
against him, but that he had triumphed over, to some ex¬ 
tent, by hard efforts and the aid of a good son; and winding 
up with the story of how Tom had got the best part of the 
needful money. But the streak of irritation and hostile 
triumph seemed to melt for a little while into purer fatherly 
pride and pleasure, when, Tom’s health having been pro¬ 
posed, and uncle Deane having taken occasion to say a few 
words of eulogy on his general character and conduct, Tom 
himself got up and made the single speech of his life. It 
could hardly have been briefer. He thanked the gentlemen 
for the honor they had done him. He was glad that he had 
been able to help his father in proving his integrity and re¬ 
gaining his honest name; and, for his own part, he hoped he 
should never undo that work and disgrace that name. But 
the applause that followed was so great, and Tom looked 
so gentlemanly as well as tall and straight, that Mr. Tulliver 
remarked, in an explanatory manner, to his friends on his 
right and left, that he had spent a deal of money on his son’s 
education. 

The party broke up in very sober fashion at five o’clock. 
Tom remained in St. Ogg’s to attend to some business, and 
Mr. Tulliver mounted his horse to go home, and describe the 


WHEAT AND TARES 


387 


memorable things that had been said and done, to “ poor 
Bessy and the little wench.” The air of excitement that 
hung about him was but faintly due to good cheer or any 
stimulus but the potent wine of triumphant joy. He did 
not choose any back street to-day, but rode slowly, with 
uplifted head and free glances, along the principal street 
all the way to the bridge. Why did he not happen to meet 
Wakem? The want of that coincidence vexed him, and set 
his mind at work in an irritating way. Perhaps Wakem was 
gone out of town to-day on purpose to avoid seeing or hear¬ 
ing anything of an honorable action which might well cause 
him some unpleasant twinges. If Wakem were to meet him 
then, Mr. Tulliver would look straight at him, and the ras¬ 
cal would perhaps be forsaken a little by his cool, domineer¬ 
ing impudence. He would know by and by that an honest 
man was not going to serve him any longer, and lend his 
honesty to fill a pocket already over-full of dishonest gains. 
Perhaps the luck was beginning to turn; perhaps the Devil 
didn’t always hold the best cards in this world. 

Simmering in this way, Mr. Tulliver approached the yard- 
gates of Dorlcote Mill, near enough to see a well-known 
figure coming out of them on a fine black horse. They met 
about fifty yards from the gates, between the great chest¬ 
nuts and elms and the high bank. 

“Tulliver,” said Wakem, abruptly, in a haughtier tone 
than usual, “ what a fool’s trick you did, — spreading those 
hard l um ps on that Far Close! I told you how it would 
be; but you men never learn to farm with any method.” 

“Oh! ” said Tulliver, suddenly boiling up; “get some¬ 
body else to farm for you, then, as’ll ask you to teach 
him.” 

“ You have been drinking, I suppose,” said Wakem, really 
believing that this was the meaning of Tulliver’s flushed face 
and sparkling eyes. 

“ No, I’ve not been drinking,” said Tulliver; “ I want no 
drinking to help me make up my mind as I’ll serve no longer 
under a scoundrel.” 

“ Very well! you may leave my premises to-morrow, then; 


388 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


hold your insolent tongue and let me pass.” (Tulliver was 
backing his horse across the road to hem Wakem in.) 

“ No, I sha’n’t let you pass,” said Tulliver, getting fiercer. 
“ I shall tell you what I think of you first. You’re too big a 
raskill to get hanged — you’re-” 

“ Let me pass, you ignorant brute, or I’ll ride over 
you.” 

Mr. Tulliver, spurring his horse and raising his whip, 
made a rush forward; and Wakem’s horse, rearing and stag¬ 
gering backward, threw his rider from the saddle and sent 
him sideways on the ground. Wakem had had the presence 
of mind to loose the bridle at once, and as the horse only 
staggered a few paces and then stood still, he might have 
risen and remounted without more inconvenience than a 
bruise and a shake. But before he could rise, Tulliver was 
off his horse too. The sight of the long-hated predominant 
man down, and in his power, threw him into a frenzy of 
triumphant vengeance, which seemed to give him preter¬ 
natural agility and strength. He rushed on Wakem, who 
was in the act of trying to recover his feet, grasped him by 
the left arm so as to press Wakem’s whole weight on the 
right arm, which rested on the ground, and flogged him 
fiercely across the back with his riding-whip. Wakem 
shouted for help, but no help came, until a woman’s scream 
was heard, and the cry of “ Father, father! ” 

Suddenly, Wakem felt, something had arrested Mr. Tulli- 
ver’s arm; for the flogging ceased, and the grasp on his own 
arm was relaxed. 

“ Get away with you — go! ” said Tulliver, angrily. But 
it was not to Wakem that he spoke. Slowly the lawyer 
rose, and, as he turned his head, saw that Tulliver’s arms 
were being held by a girl, rather by the fear of hurting the 
girl that clung to him with all her young might. 

“Oh, Luke — mother—come and help Mr. Wakem!” 
Maggie cried, as she heard the longed-for footsteps. 

“ Help me on to that low horse,” said Wakem to Luke, 
“then I shall perhaps manage; though — confound it — I 
think this arm is sprained.” 


WHEAT AND TARES 


389 


With some difficulty, Wakem was heaved on to Tulliver’s 
horse. Then he turned toward the miller and said, with 
white rage, “ You’ll suffer for this, sir. Your daughter is a 
witness that you’ve assaulted me.” 

“ I don’t care,” said Mr. Tulliver, in a thick, fierce voice; 
“ go and show your back, and tell ’em I thrashed you. Tell 
’em I’ve made things a bit more even i’ the world.” 

“ Ride my horse home with me,” said Wakem to Luke. 
“ By the Tofton Ferry, not through the town.” 

“ Father, come in!” said Maggie, imploringly. Then, 
seeing that Wakem had ridden off, and that no further vio¬ 
lence was possible, she slackened her hold and burst info 
hysteric sobs, while poor Mrs. Tulliver stood by in silence, 
quivering with fear. But Maggie became conscious that 
as she was slackening her hold her father was beginning 
to grasp her and lean on her. The surprise checked her 
sobs. 

“ I feel ill — faintish,” he said. “ Help me in, Bessy — I’m 
giddy — I’ve a pain i’ the head.” 

He walked in slowly, propped by his wife and daughter, 
and tottered into his arm-chair. The almost purple flush had 
given way to paleness, and his hand was cold. 

“Hadn’t we better send for the doctor?” said Mrs. 
Tulliver. 

He seemed to be too faint and suffering to hear her; but 
presently, when she said to Maggie, “ Go and seek for some¬ 
body to fetch the doctor,” he looked up at her with full 
comprehension, and said, “Doctor? No — no doctor. It’s 
my head, that’s all. Help me to bed.” 

Sad ending to the day that had risen on them all like a 
beginning of better times! But mingled seed must bear a 
mingled crop. 

In half an hour after his father had lain down Tom came 
home. Bob Jakin was with him, come to congratulate “ the 
old master,” not without some excusable pride that he had 
had his share in bringing about Mr. Tom’s good luck; and 
Tom had thought his father would like nothing better, as a 
finish to the day, than a talk with Bob. But now Tom could 


390 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


only spend the evening in gloomy expectation of the un¬ 
pleasant consequences that must follow on this mad out¬ 
break of his father’s long-smothered hate. After the pain¬ 
ful news had been told, he sat in silence; he had not spirit 
or inclination to tell his mother and sister anything about 
the dinner; they hardly cared to ask it. Apparently the 
mingled thread in the web of their life was so curiously 
twisted together that there could be no joy without a sorrow 
coming close upon it. Tom was dejected by the thought 
that his exemplary effort must always be baffled by the 
wrong-doing of others; Maggie was living through, over and 
over again, the agony of the moment in which she had 
rushed to throw herself on her father’s arm, with a vague, 
shuddering foreboding of wretched scenes to come. Not 
one of the three felt any particular alarm about Mr. Tulli- 
ver’s health; the symptoms did not recall his former dan¬ 
gerous attack, and it seemed only a necessary consequence 
that his violent passion and effort of strength, after many 
hours of unusual excitement, should have made him feel ill. 
Rest would probably cure him. 

Tom, tired out by his active day,‘fell asleep soon, and 
slept soundly; it seemed to him as if he had only just come 
to bed, when he waked to see his mother standing by him 
in the gray light of early morning. 

“ My boy, you must get up this minute; I’ve sent for the 
doctor, and your father wants you and Maggie to come to 
him.” 

“ Is he worse, mother ? ” 

“ He’s been very ill all night with his head, but he doesn’t 
say it’s worse; he only said suddenly, ‘ Bessy, fetch the boy 
and girl. Tell ’em to make haste.’ ” 

Maggie and Tom threw on their clothes hastily in the 
chill gray light, and reached their father’s room almost at 
the same moment. He was watching for them with an ex¬ 
pression of pain on his brow, but with sharpened, anxious 
consciousness in his eyes. Mrs. Tulliver stood at the foot of 
the bed, frightened and trembling, looking worn and aged 
from disturbed rest. Maggie was at the bedside first, but 


WHEAT AND TARES 391 

her father’s glance was toward Tom, who came and stood 
next to her. 

“ Tom, my lad, it’s come upon me as I sha’n’t get up 
again. This world’s been too many for me, my lad, but 
you’ve done what you could to make things a bit even. 
Shake hands wi’ me again, my lad, before I go away from 
you.” 

The father and son clasped hands and looked at each other 
an instant. Then Tom said, trying to speak firmly, — 

“ Have you any wish, father — that I can fulfil, 
when-” 

“ Ay, my lad — you’ll try and get the old mill back.” 

“ Yes, father.” 

“ And there’s your mother — you’ll try and make her 
amends, all you can, for my bad luck — and there’s the little 
wench-” 

The father turned his eyes on Maggie with a still more 
eager look, while she, with a bursting heart, sank on her 
knees, to be closer to the dear, time-worn face which had 
been present with her through long years, as the sign of her 
deepest love and hardest trial. 

“You must take care of her, Tom — don’t you fret, my 
wench — there’ll come somebody as’ll love you and take 
your part — and you must be good to her, my lad. I was 
good to my sister. Kiss me, Maggie. — Come, Bessy. — 
You’ll manage to pay for a brick grave, Tom, so as your 
mother and me can lie together.” 

He looked away from them all when he had said this, and 
lay silent for some minutes, while they stood watching him, 
not daring to move. The morning light was growing clearer 
for them, and they could see the heaviness gathering in his 
face, and the dulness in his eyes. But at last he looked 
toward Tom and said, — 

“ I had my turn — I beat him. That was nothing but 
fair. I never wanted anything but what was fair.” 

“ But, father, dear father,” said Maggie, an unspeakable 
anxiety predominating over her grief, “ you forgive him — 
you forgive every one now? ” 


392 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


He did not move his eyes to look at her, but he said, — 

“ No, my wench. I don’t forgive him. What’s forgiving 
to do? I can’t love a raskill — ” 

His voice had become thicker; but he wanted to say more, 
and moved his lips again and again, struggling in vain to 
speak. At length the words forced their way. 

“Does God forgive raskills? — but if He does, He won’t 
be hard wi’ me.” 

His hands moved uneasily, as if he wanted them to re¬ 
move some obstruction that weighed upon him. Two or 
three times there fell from him some broken words, — 

“ This world’s — too many — honest man — puzzling 

_ yy 

Soon they merged iifto mere mutterings; the eyes had 
ceased to discern; and then came the final silence. 

But not of death. For an hour or more the chest heaved, 
the loud, hard breathing continued, getting gradually 
slower, as the cold dews gathered on the brow. 

At last there was total stillness, and poor Tulliver’s dimly 
lighted soul had forever ceased to be vexed with the painful 
riddle of this world. 

Help was come now; Luke and his wife were there, and 
Mr. Turnbull had arrived, too late for everything but to 
say, “ This is death.” 

Tom and Maggie went downstairs together into the room 
where their father’s place was empty. Their eyes turned to 
the same spot, and Maggie spoke, — 

“ Tom, forgive me — let us always love each other; ” and 
they clung and wept together. 



BOOK VI — THE GREAT TEMPTATION 


CHAPTER I 


A DUET IN PARADISE 



'HE well-furnished drawing-room, with the open grand 


_L piano, and the pleasant outlook down a sloping garden 
to a boat-house by the side of the Floss, is Mr. Deane’s. 
The neat little lady in mourning, whose light-brown ring¬ 
lets are falling over the colored embroidery with which her 
fingers are busy, is of course Lucy Deane; and the fine 
young man who is leaning down from his chair to snap the 
scissors in the extremely abbreviated face of the “ King 
Charles ” lying on the young lady’s feet is no other than 
Mr. Stephen Guest, whose diamond ring, attar of roses, and 
air of nonchalant leisure, at twelve o’clock in the day, are 
the graceful and odoriferous result of the largest oil-mill 
and the most extensive wharf in St. Ogg’s. There is an ap¬ 
parent triviality in the action with the scissors, but your 
discernment perceives at once that there is a design in it 
which makes it eminently worthy of a large-headed, long- 
limbed young man; for you see that Lucy wants the scis¬ 
sors, and is compelled, reluctant as she may be, to shake her 
ringlets back, raise her soft hazel eyes, smile playfully down 


393 



394 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


on the face that is so very nearly on a level with her knee, 
and holding out her little shell-pink palm, to say, — 

“ My scissors, please, if you can renounce the great pleas¬ 
ure of persecuting my poor Minny.” 

The foolish scissors have slipped too far over the knuckles, 
it seems, and Hercules holds out his entrapped fingers hope¬ 
lessly. 

' “ Confound the scissors! The oval lies the wrong way. 
Please draw them off for me.” 

“ Draw them off with your other hand,” says Miss Lucy, 
roguishly. 

“ Oh, but that’s my left hand; I’m not left-handed.” 

Lucy laughs, and the scissors are drawn off with gentle 
touches from tiny tips, which naturally dispose Mr. Stephen 
for a repetition da capo. Accordingly, he watches for the 
release of the scissors, that he may get them into his pos¬ 
session again. 

“ No, no,” said Lucy, sticking them in her band, “ you 
shall not have my scissors again, — you have strained them 
already. Now don’t set Minny growling again. Sit up and 
behave properly, and then I will tell you some news.” 

“What is that?” said Stephen, throwing himself back 
and hanging his right arm over the corner of his chair. He 
might have been sitting for his portrait, which would have 
represented a rather striking young man of five-and-twenty, 
with a square forehead, short dark-brown hair, standing 
erect, with a slight wave at the end, like a thick crop of 
corn, and a half-ardent, half-sarcastic glance from under 
his well-marked horizontal eyebrows. “Is it very impor¬ 
tant news ? ” 

“ Yes, very. Guess.” 

“You are going to change Minny’s diet, and give him 
three ratafias soaked in a dessertspoonful of cream daily? ” 

“ Quite wrong.” 

“ Well, then, Dr. Kenn has been preaching against buck¬ 
ram, and you ladies have all been sending him a round-robin, 
saying, ' This is a hard doctrine; who can bear it ? ”’ 

“For shame!” said Lucy, adjusting her little mouth 


THE GREAT TEMPTATION 


395 


gravely. “ It is rather dull of you not to guess my news, 
because it is about something I mentioned to you not very 
long ago.” 

“ But you have mentioned many things to me not long 
ago. Does your feminine tyranny require that when you 
say the thing you mean is one of several things, I should 
know it immediately by that mark? ” 

“ Yes, I know you think I am silly.” 

“ I think you are perfectly charming.” 

“ And my silliness is part of my charm ? ” 

“ I didn’t say that.” 

“ But I know you like women to be rather insipid. Philip 
Wakem betrayed you; he said so one day when you were 
not here.” 

“ Oh, I know Phil is fierce on that point; he makes it 
quite a personal matter. I think he must be love-sick for 
some unknown lady, — some exalted Beatrice whom he met 
abroad.” 

“ By the by,” said Lucy, pausing in her work, “ it has just 
occurred to me that I never found out whether my cousin 
Maggie will object to see Philip, as her brother does. Tom 
will not enter a room where Philip is, if he knows it; per¬ 
haps Maggie may be the same, and then we sha’n’t be able 
to sing our glees, shall we ? ” 

“ What! is your cousin coming to stay with you ? ” said 
Stephen, with a look of slight annoyance. 

“ Yes; that was my news, which you have forgotten. She’s 
going to leave her situation, where she has been nearly two 
years, poor thing, — ever since her father’s death; and she 
will stay with me a month or two, — many months, I hope.” 

“ And am I bound to be pleased at that news ? ” 

“ Oh no, not at all,” said Lucy, with a little air of pique. 
“I am pleased, but that, of course, is no reason why you 
should be pleased. There is no girl in the world I love so 
well as my cousin Maggie.” 

“ And you will be inseparable, I suppose, when she comes. 
There will be no possibility of a tete-a-tete with you any 
more, unless you can find an admirer for her, who will pair 


396 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


off with her occasionally. What is the ground of dislike to 
Philip ? He might have been a resource.” 

“ It is a family quarrel with Philip’s father. There were 
very painful circumstances, I believe. I never quite under¬ 
stood them, or knew them all. My Uncle Tulliver was un¬ 
fortunate and lost all his property, and I think he consid¬ 
ered Mr. Wakem was somehow the cause of it. Mr. Wakem 
bought Dorlcote Mill, my uncle’s old place, where he always 
lived. You must remember my uncle Tulliver, don’t you? ” 

“ No,” said Stephen, with rather supercilious indifference. 
“ I’ve always known the name, and I dare say I knew the 
man by sight, apart from his name. I know half the names 
and faces in the neighborhood in that detached, disjointed 
way.” 

“ He was a very hot-tempered man. I remember, when I 
was a little girl and used to go to see my cousins, he often 
frightened me by talking as if he were angry. Papa told 
me there was a dreadful quarrel, the very day before my 
uncle’s death, between him and Mr. Wakem, but it was 
hushed up. That was when you were in London. Papa says 
my uncle was quite mistaken in many ways; his mind had 
become embittered. But Tom and Maggie must naturally 
feel it very painful to be reminded of these things. They 
have had so much, so very much trouble. Maggie was at 
school with me six years ago, when she was fetched away 
because of her father’s misfortunes, and she has hardly had 
any pleasure since, I think. She has been in a dreary situa¬ 
tion in a school since uncle’s death, because she is deter¬ 
mined to be independent, and not live with aunt Pullet; 
and I could hardly wish her to come to me then, because 
dear mamma was ill, and everything was so sad. That is 
why I want her to come to me now, and have a long, long 
holiday.” 

“ Very sweet and angelic of you,” said Stephen, looking at 
her with an admiring smile; “ and all the more so if she has 
the conversational qualities of her mother.” 

“ Poor aunty! You are cruel to ridicule her. She is very 
valuable to me, I know. She manages the house beauti- 


THE GREAT TEMPTATION 397 

fully, — much better than any stranger would, — ancf she 
was a great comfort to me in mamma’s illness.” 

“ Yes, but in point of companionship one would prefer 
that she should be represented by her brandy-cherries and 
cream-cakes. I think with a shudder that her daughter will 
always be present in person, and have no agreeable proxies 
of that kind, — a fat, blond girl, with round blue eyes, who 
will stare at us silently.” 

“ Oh yes! ” exclaimed Lucy, laughing wickedly, and clap¬ 
ping her hands, “ that is just my cousin Maggie. You must 
have seen her! ” 

“No, indeed; I’m only guessing what Mrs. Tulliver’s 
daughter must be; and then if she is to banish Philip, our 
only apology for a tenor, that will be an additional bore.” 

“ But I hope that may not be. I think I will ask you to 
call on Philip and tell him Maggie is coming to-morrow. He 
is quite aware of Tom’s feeling, and always keeps out of his 
way; so he will understand, if you tell him, that I asked you 
to warn him not to come until I write to ask him.” 

“ I think you had better write a pretty note for me to 
take; Phil is so sensitive, you know, the least thing might 
frighten him off coming at all, and we had hard work to 
get him. I can never induce him to come to the park; he 
doesn’t like my sisters, I think. It is only your faery touch 
that can lay his ruffled feathers.” 

Stephen mastered the little hand that was straying to¬ 
ward the table, and touched it lightly with his lips. Little 
Lucy felt very proud and happy. She and Stephen were in 
that stage of courtship which makes the most exquisite mo¬ 
ment of youth, the freshest blossom-time of passion, — when 
each is sure of the other’s love, but no formal declaration 
has been made, and all is mutual divination, exalting 
the most trivial word, the lightest gesture, into thrills 
delicate and delicious as wafted jasmine scent. The ex¬ 
plicitness of an engagement wears off this finest edge of 
susceptibility; it is jasmine gathered and presented in a 
large bouquet. 

“ But it is really odd that you should have hit so exactly 


398 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


on Maggie’s appearance and manners,” said the cun¬ 
ning Lucy, moving to reach her desk, “ because she might 
have been like her brother, you know; and Tom has not 
round eyes; and he is as far as possible from staring at 
people.” 

“ Oh, I suppose he is like the father; he seems to be as 
proud as Lucifer. Not a brilliant companion, though, I 
should think.” 

“ I like Tom. He gave me my Minny when I lost Lolo; 
and papa is very fond of him: he says Tom has excellent 
principles. It was through him that his father was able to 
pay all his debts before he died.” 

“ Oh, ah; I’ve heard about that. I heard your father and 
mine talking about it a little while ago, after dinner, in one 
of their interminable discussions about business. They think 
of doing something for young Tulliver; he saved them from 
a considerable loss by riding home in some marvellous way, 
like Turpin, to bring them news about the stoppage of a 
bank, or something of that sort. But I was rather drowsy 
at the time.” 

Stephen rose from his seat, and sauntered to the piano, 
humming in falsetto, Graceful Consort, as he turned over 
the volume of The Creation, which stood open on the 
desk. 

“ Come and sing this,” he said, when he saw Lucy rising. 

“What, Graceful Consort? I don’t think it suits your 
voice.” 

“Never mind; it exactly suits my feeling, which, Philip 
will have it, is the grand element of good singing. I notice 
men with indifferent voices are usually of that opinion.” 

“ Philip burst into one of his invectives against The 
Creation the other day,” said Lucy, seating herself at the 
piano. “ He says it has a sort of sugared complacency and 
flattering make-believe in it, as if it were written for the 
birthday fete of a German Grand-Duke.” 

“ Oh, pooh! He is the fallen Adam with a soured temper. 
We are Adam and Eve unfallen, in Paradise. Now, then, — 
the recitative, for the sake of the moral. You will sing the 


THE GREAT TEMPTATION 399 

whole duty of woman, —' And from obedience grows my 
pride and happiness/ ” 

“ Oh no, I shall not respect an Adam who drags the tempo, 
as you will,” said Lucy, beginning to play the duet. 

Surely the only courtship unshaken by doubts and fears 
must be that in which the lovers can sing together. The 
sense of mutual fitness that springs from the two deep notes 
fulfilling expectation just at the right moment between the 
notes of the silvery soprano, from the perfect accord of de¬ 
scending thirds and fifths, from the preconcerted loving 
chase of a fugue, is likely enough to supersede any immedi¬ 
ate demand for less impassioned forms of agreement. The 
contralto will not care to catechise the bass; the tenor will 
foresee no embarrassing dearth of remark in evenings spent 
with the lovely soprano. In the provinces, too, where music 
was so scarce in that remote time, how could the musical 
people avoid falling in love with each other? Even politi¬ 
cal principle must have been in danger of relaxation under 
such circumstances; and the violin, faithful to rotten bor¬ 
oughs, must have been tempted to fraternize in a demoraliz¬ 
ing way with a reforming violincello. In this case, the 
linnet-throated soprano and the full-toned bass singing,— 

“ With thee delight is ever new, 

With thee is life incessant bliss,” 

believed what they sang all the more because they sang it. 

“ Now for Raphael's great song,” said Lucy, when they 
had finished the duet. “You do the ‘ heavy beasts’ to 
perfection.” 

“That sounds complimentary,” said Stephen, looking at 
his watch. “ By Jove,-it’s nearly half-past one! Well, I can 
just sing this.” 

Stephen delivered with admirable ease the deep notes rep¬ 
resenting the tread of the heavy beasts; but when a singer 
has an audience of two, there is room for divided sentiments. 
Minny’s mistress was charmed; but Minny, who had in¬ 
trenched himself, trembling, in his basket as soon as the 


400 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


music began, found this thunder so little to his taste that he 
leaped out and scampered under the remotest chiffonnier, 
as the most eligible place in which a small dog could await 
the crack of doom. 

“ Adieu, 1 graceful consort/ ” said Stephen, buttoning his 
coat across when he had done singing, and smiling down 
from his tall height, with the air of rather a patronizing 
lover, at the little l'ady on the music-stool. “ My bliss is 
not incessant, for I must gallop home. I promised to be 
there at lunch.” 

“ You will not be able to call on Philip, then? It is of no 
consequence; I have said everything in my note.” 

“ You will be engaged with your cousin to-morrow, I 
suppose? ” 

“ Yes, we are going to have a little family-party. My 
cousin Tom will dine with us; and poor aunty will have her 
two children together for the first time. It will be very 
pretty; I think a great deal about it.” 

“.But I may come the next day? ” 

“ Oh yes! Come and be introduced to my cousin Maggie; 
though you can hardly be said not to have seen her, you 
have described her so well.” 

“ Good-by, then.” And there was that slight pressure of 
the hands, and momentary meeting of the eyes, which will 
often leave a little lady with a slight flush and smile on her 
face that do not subside immediately when the door is 
closed, and with an inclination to walk up and down the 
room rather than to seat herself quietly at her embroidery, 
or other rational and improving occupation. At least this 
was the effect on Lucy; and you will not, I hope, consider 
it an indication of vanity predominating over more tender 
impulses, that she just glanced in the chimney-glass as her 
walk brought her near it. The desire to know that one has 
not looked an absolute fright during a few hours of conver¬ 
sation may be construed as lying within the bounds of a 
laudable benevolent consideration for others. And Lucy had 
so much of this benevolence in her nature that I am inclined 
to think her small egoisms were impregnated with it, just 


THE GREAT TEMPTATION 


401 


as there are people not altogether unknown to you whose 
small benevolences have a predominant and somewhat rank 
odor of egoism. 

Even now, that she is walking up and down with a 
little triumphant flutter of her girlish heart at the sense 
that she is loved by the person of chief consequence in 
her small world, you may see in her hazel eyes an ever¬ 
present sunny benignity, in which the momentary harmless 
flashes of personal vanity are quite lost; and if she is happy 
in thinking of her lover, it is because the thought of him 
mingles readily with all the gentle affections and good- 
natured offices with which she fills her peaceful days. Even 
now, her mind, with that instantaneous alternation which 
makes two currents of feeling or imagination seem simul¬ 
taneous, is glancing continually from Stephen to the prepa¬ 
rations she has only half finished in Maggie’s room. Cousin 
Maggie should be treated as well as the grandest lady-visitor, 
— nay, better, for she should have Lucy’s best prints and 
drawings in her bedroom, and the very finest bouquet of 
spring flowers on her table. Maggie would enjoy all that, 
she was so fond of pretty things! And there was poor aunt 
Tuiliver, that no one made any account of, she was to be 
surprised with the present of a cap of superlative quality, 
and to have her health drunk in a gratifying manner, for 
which Lucy was going to lay a plot with her father this 
evening. Clearly, she had not time to indulge in long 
reveries about her own happy love-affairs. With this 
thought she walked toward the door, but paused there. 

“ W T hat’s the matter, then, Minny? ” she said, stooping 
in answer to some whimpering of that small quadruped, 
and lifting his glossy head against her pink cheek. “ Did 
you think I was going without you? Come, then, let us go 
and see Sinbad.” 

Sinbad was Lucy’s chestnut horse, that she always fed 
with her own hand when he was turned out in the paddock. 
She was fond of feeding dependent creatures, and knew the 
private tastes of all the animals about the house, delight¬ 
ing in the little rippling sounds of her canaries when their 


402 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


beaks were busy with fresh seed, and in the small nibbling 
pleasures of certain animals which, lest she should appear 
too trivial, I will here call “ the more familiar rodents.” 

Was not Stephen Guest right in his decided opinion that 
this slim maiden of eighteen was quite the sort of wife a 
man would not be likely to repent of marrying, — a woman 
who was loving and thoughtful for other women, not giving 
them Judas-kisses with eyes askance on their welcome de¬ 
fects, but with real care and vision for their half-hidden 
pains and mortifications, with long ruminating enjoyment 
of little pleasures prepared for them? Perhaps the emphasis 
of his admiration did not fall precisely on this rarest qual¬ 
ity in her; perhaps he approved his own choice of her 
chiefly because she did not strike him as a remarkable 
rarity. A man likes his wife to be pretty; well, Lucy was 
pretty, but not to a maddening extent. A man likes his 
wife to be accomplished, gentle, affectionate, and not stupid; 
and Lucy had all these qualifications. Stephen was not 
surprised to find himself in love with her, and was con¬ 
scious of excellent judgment in preferring her to Miss Ley- 
burn, the daughter of the county member, although Lucy 
was only the daughter of his father’s subordinate partner; 
besides, he had had to defy and overcome a slight unwilling¬ 
ness and disappointment in his father and sisters, — a cir¬ 
cumstance which gives a young man an agreeable conscious¬ 
ness of his own dignity. Stephen was aware that he had 
sense and independence enough to choose the wife who was 
likely to make him happy, unbiassed by any indirect con¬ 
siderations. He meant to choose Lucy; she was a little 
darling, and exactly the sort of woman he had always most 
admired. 


THE GREAT TEMPTATION 


403 


CHAPTER II 

FIRST IMPRESSIONS 

H E IS very clever, Maggie/' said Lucy. She was kneel¬ 
ing on a footstool at Maggie's feet, after placing 
that dark lady in the large crimson-velvet chair. “ I feel 
sure you will like him. I hope you will.'' 

“ I shall be very difficult to please,'' said Maggie, smiling, 
and holding up one of Lucy's long curls, that the sunlight 
might shine through it. “ A gentleman who thinks he is 
good enough for Lucy must expect to be sharply criticized." 

“ Indeed, he's a great, deal too good for me. And some¬ 
times, when he is away, I almost think it can't really be 
that he loves me. But I can never doubt it when he is with 
me, though I couldn’t bear any one but you to know that I 
feel in that way, Maggie." 

“ Oh, then, if I disapprove of him you can give him up, 
since you are not engaged," said Maggie, with playful 
gravity. 

“ I would rather not be engaged. When people are en¬ 
gaged, they begin to think of being married soon," said 
Lucy, too thoroughly preoccupied to notice Maggie's joke; 
“ and I should like everything to go on for 'a long while just 
as it is. Sometimes I am quite frightened lest Stephen 
should say that he has spoken to papa; and from some¬ 
thing that fell from papa the other day, I feel sure he and 
Mr. Guest are expecting that. And Stephen’s sisters are 
very civil to me now. At first, I think they didn’t like his 
paying me attention; and that was natural. It does seem 
out of keeping that I should ever live in a great place 
like the Park House, such a little insignificant thing as I 
am." 

“ But people are not expected to be large in proportion to 
the houses they live in, like snails," said Maggie, laughing. 
“ Pray, are Mr. Guest's sisters giantesses ? " 

“Oh no; and not handsome, — that is, not very," said 


404 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


Lucy, half-penitent at this uncharitable remark. “But he 
is — at least he is generally considered very handsome.” 

“ Though you are unable to share that opinion ? ” 

“ Oh, I don’t know,” said Lucy, blushing pink over brow 
and neck. “ It is a bad plan to raise expectation; you will 
perhaps be disappointed. But I have prepared a charming 
surprise for him; I shall have a glorious laugh against him. 
I shall not tell you what it is, though.” 

Lucy rose from her knees and went to a little distance, 
holding her pretty head on one side, as if she had been 
arranging Maggie for a portrait, and wished to judge of the 
general effect. 

“ Stand up a moment, Maggie.” 

“ What is your pleasure now? ” said Maggie, smiling lan¬ 
guidly as she rose from her chair and looked down on sher 
slight, aerial cousin, whose figure was quite subordinate to 
her faultless drapery of silk and crape. 

Lucy kept her contemplative attitude a moment or two 
in silence, and then said,— 

“ I can’t think what witchery it is in you, Maggie, that 
makes you look best in shabby clothes; though you really 
must have a new dress now. But do you know, last night 
I was trying to fancy you in a handsome, fashionable dress, 
and do what I would, that old limp merino would come back 
as the only right thing for you. I wonder if Marie An¬ 
toinette looked all the grander when her gown was darned 
at the elbows. Now, if I were to put anything shabby 
on, I should be quite unnoticeable. I should be a mere 
rag.” 

“ Oh, quite,” said Maggie, with mock gravity. “ You 
would be liable to be swept out of the room with the cob¬ 
webs and carpet-dust, and to find yourself under the grate, 
like Cinderella. Mayn’t I sit down now?” 

“ Yes, now you may,” said Lucy, laughing. Then with 
an air of serious reflection, unfastening her large jet brooch, 
“ But you must change brooches, Maggie; that little butter¬ 
fly looks silly on you.” 

“ But won’t that mar the charming effect of my con- 


THE GREAT TEMPTATION 


405 


sistent shabbiness ? ” said Maggie, seating herself submis¬ 
sively, while Lucy knelt again and unfastened the contempt¬ 
ible butterfly. “ I wish my mother were of your opinion, 
for she was fretting last night because this is my best frock. 
I’ve been saving my money to pay for some lessons; I shall 
never get a better situation without more accomplishments.” 

Maggie gave a little sigh. 

“ Now, don’t put on that sad look again,” said Lucy, pin¬ 
ning the large brooch below Maggie’s fine throat. “ You’re 
forgetting that you’ve left that dreary schoolroom behind 
you, and have no little girls’ clothes to mend.” 

“ Yes,” said Maggie. “ It is with me as I used to think 
it would be with the poor uneasy white bear I saw at the 
show. I thought he must have got so stupid with the habit 
of turning backward and forward in that narrow space that 
he would keep doing it if they set him free. One gets a bad 
habit of being unhappy.” 

“ But I shall put you under a discipline of pleasure that 
will make you lose that bad habit,” said Lucy, sticking the 
black butterfly absently in her own collar, while her eyes 
met Maggie’s affectionately. 

“ You dear, tiny thing,” said Maggie, in one of her bursts 
of loving admiration, “ you enjoy other people’s happiness 
so much, I believe you would do without any of your 
own. I wish I were like you.” 

“ I’ve never been tried in that way,” said Lucy. “ I’ve 
always been so happy. I don’t know whether I could bear 
much trouble; I never had any but poor mamma’s death. 
You have been tried, Maggie; and I’m sure you feel for 
other people quite as much as I do.” 

“ No, Lucy,” said Maggie, shaking her head slowly. “ I 
don’t enjoy their happiness as you do, else I should be more 
contented. I do feel for them when they are in trouble; I 
don’t think I could ever bear to make any one wnhappy; 
and yet I often hate myself, because I get angry sometimes 
at the sight of happy people. I think I get worse as I get 
older, more selfish. That seems very dreadful.” 

Now, Maggie! ” said Lucy, in a tone of remonstrance. 


406 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


“ I don’t believe a word of that. It is all a gloomy fancy, 
just because you are depressed by a dull, wearisome life.” 

“ Well, perhaps it is,” said Maggie, resolutely clearing 
away the clouds from her face with a bright smile, and 
throwing herself backward in her chair. “ Perhaps it comes 
from the school diet, — watery rice-pudding spiced with 
Pinnock. Let us hope it will give way before my mother’s 
custards and this charming Geoffrey Crayon.” 

Maggie took up The Sketch Book, which lay by her on 
the table. 

“ Do I look fit to be seen with this little brooch ? ” said 
Lucy, going to survey the effect in the chimney-glass. 

“ Oh no, Mr. Guest will be obliged to go out of the room 
again if he sees you in it. Pray make haste and put an¬ 
other on.” 

Lucy hurried out of the room, but Maggie did not take 
the opportunity of opening her book; she let it fall on her 
knees, while her eyes wandered to the window, where she 
could see the sunshine falling on the rich clumps of spring 
flowers and on the long hedge of laurels, and beyond, the 
silvery breadth of the dear old Floss, that at this distance 
seemed to be sleeping in a morning holiday. The sweet 
fresh garden-scent came through the open window, and the 
birds were busy flitting and alighting, gurgling and singing. 
Yet Maggie’s eyes began to fill with tears. The sight of the 
old scenes had made the rush of memories so painful that 
even yesterday she had only been able to rejoice in her 
mother’s restored comfort and Tom’s brotherly friendliness 
as we rejoice in good news of friends at a distance, rather 
than in the presence of a happiness which we share. Mem¬ 
ory and imagination urged upon her a sense of privation too 
keen to let her taste what was offered in the transient 
present. Her future, she thought, was likely to be worse 
than her past, for after her years of contented renuncia¬ 
tion, she had slipped back into desire and longing; she 
found joyless days of distasteful occupation harder and 
harder; she found the image of the intense and varied life 
she yearned for, and despaired of, becoming more and more 


THE GREAT TEMPTATION 


407 


importunate. The sound of the opening door roused her, 
and hastily wiping away her tears, she began to turn over 
the leaves of her book. 

“ There is one pleasure, I know, Maggie, that your deep¬ 
est dismalness will never resist,” said Lucy, beginning to 
speak as soon as she entered the room. “ That is music, 
and I mean you to have quite a riotous feast of it. I mean 
you to get up your playing again, which used to be so much 
better than mine, when we were at Laceham.” 

“ You would have laughed to see me playing the little 
girls’ tunes over and over to them, when I took them to 
practise,” said Maggie, “ just for the sake of fingering the 
dear keys again. But I don’t know whether I could play 
anything more difficult now than ‘ Begone, dull care! ’ ” 

“ I know what a wild state of joy you used to be in when 
the glee-men came round,” said Lucy, taking up her em¬ 
broidery; “ and we might have all those old glees that 
you used to love so, if I were certain that you don’t feel ex¬ 
actly as Tom does about some things.” 

“ I should have thought there was nothing you might 
be more certain of,” said Maggie, smiling. 

“ I ought rather to have said, one particular thing. Be¬ 
cause if you feel just as he does about that, we shall want 
our third voice. St. Ogg’s is so miserably provided with 
musical gentlemen. There are really only Stephen and 
Philip Wakem who have any knowledge of music, so as to 
be able to sing a part.” 

Lucy had looked up from her work as she uttered the 
last sentence, and saw that there was a change in Maggie’s 
face. 

“ Does it hurt you to hear the name mentioned, Maggie? 
If it does, I will not speak of him again. I know Tom will 
not see him if he can avoid it.” 

“ I don’t feel at all as Tom does.on that subject,” said 
Maggie, rising and going to the window as if she wanted 
to see more of the landscape. “ I’ve always liked Philip 
Wakem ever since I was a little girl, and saw him at Lorton. 
He was so good when Tom hurt his foot ” 


408 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


“ Oh, I’m so glad! ” said Lucy. “ Then you won’t mind 
his coming sometimes, and we can have much more music 
than we could without him. I’m very fond of poor Philip, 
only I wish he were not so morbid about his deformity. I 
suppose it is his deformity that makes him so sad, and 
sometimes bitter. It is certainly very piteous to see his 
poor little crooked body and pale face among great, strong 
people.” 

“ But, Lucy-” said Maggie, trying to arrest the prat¬ 

tling stream. 

“ Ah, there is the door-bell. That must be Stephen,” 
Lucy went on, not noticing Maggie’s faint effort to speak. 
“ One of the things I most admire in Stephen is that he 
makes a greater friend of Philip than any one.” 

It was too late for Maggie to speak now; the drawing¬ 
room door was opening, and Minny was already growling 
in a small way at the entrance of a tall gentleman, who 
went up to Lucy and took her hand with a half-polite, half¬ 
tender glance and tone of inquiry, which seemed to in¬ 
dicate that he was unconscious of any other presence. 

“ Let me introduce you to my cousin, Miss Tulliver,” 
said Lucy, turning with wicked enjoyment toward Maggie, 
who now approached from the farther window. “ This is 
Mr. Stephen Guest.” 

For one instant Stephen could not conceal his astonish¬ 
ment at the sight of this tall, dark-eyed nymph with her 
jet-black coronet of hair; the next, Maggie felt herself, for 
the first time in her life, receiving the tribute of a very 
deep blush and a very deep bow from a person toward whom 
she herself was conscious of timidity. This new experience 
was very agreeable to her, so agreeable that it almost effaced 
her previous emotion about Philip. There was a new bright¬ 
ness in her eyes, and a very becoming flush on her cheek, 
as she seated herself. 

“ I hope you perceive what a striking likeness you drew 
the day before yesterday,” said Lucy, with a pretty laugh 
of triumph. She enjoyed her lover’s confusion; the advan¬ 
tage was usually on his side. 


THE GREAT TEMPTATION 


409 


“ This designing cousin of yours quite deceived me, Miss 
Toliver,” said Stephen, seating himself by Lucy, and stoop¬ 
ing to play with Minny, only looking at Maggie furtively. 
“ She said you had light hair and blue eyes.” 

“ Nay, it was you who said so,” remonstrated Lucy. “ I 
only refrained from destroying your confidence in your 
own second-sight.” 

“ I wish I could always err in the same way,” said 
Stephen, “ and find reality so much more beautiful than 
my preconceptions.” 

“ Now you have proved yourself equal to the occasion,” 
said Maggie, “ and said what it was incumbent on you to 
say under the circumstances.” 

She flashed a slightly defiant look at him; it was clear 
to her that he had been drawing a satirical portrait of her 
beforehand. Lucy had said he was inclined to be satirical, 
and Maggie had mentally supplied the addition, “ and 
rather conceited.” 

“ An alarming amount of devil there,” was Stephen’s 
first thought. The second, when she had bent over her 
work, was, “ I wish she would look at me again.” The next 
was to answer,— 

“ I suppose all phrases of mere compliment have their 
turn to be true. A man is occasionally grateful when he 
says 1 Thank you.’ It’s rather hard upon him that he must 
use the same words with which all the world declines a 
disagreeable invitation, don’t you think so, Miss Tulliver? ” 

“ No,” said Maggie, looking at him with her direct 
glance; “ if we use common words on a great occasion, they 
are the more striking, because they are felt at once to have 
a particular meaning, like old banners, or everyday clothes, 
hung up in a sacred place.” 

“ Then my compliment ought to be eloquent,” said Ste¬ 
phen, really not quite knowing what he said while Maggie 
looked at him, “ seeing that the words were so far beneath 
the occasion.” 

“ No compliment can be eloquent, except as an expres¬ 
sion of indifference,” said Maggie, flushing a little. 


410 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


Lucy was rather alarmed; she thought Stephen and Mag¬ 
gie were not going to like each other. She had always feared 
lest Maggie should appear too odd and clever to please 
that critical gentleman. “ Why, dear Maggie,” she inter¬ 
posed, “ you have always pretended that you are too fond 
of being admired; and now, I think, you are angry be¬ 
cause some one ventures to admire you.” 

“ Not at all,” said Maggie; “ I like too well to feel that 
I am admired, but compliments never make me feel that.” 

“ I will never pay you a compliment again, Miss Tulliver,” 
said Stephen. 

“Thank you; that will be a proof of respect.” 

Poor Maggie! She was so unused to society that she 
could take nothing as a matter of course, and had never in 
her life spoken from the lips merely, so that she must 
necessarily appear absurd to more experienced ladies, from 
the excessive feeling she was apt to throw into very trivial 
incidents. But she was even conscious herself of a little 
absurdity in this instance. It was true she had a theoretic 
objection to compliments, and had once said impatiently 
to Philip that she didn’t see why women were to be told 
w T ith a simper that they were beautiful, any more than 
old men were to be told that they were venerable; still, to 
be so irritated by a common practice in the case of a stranger 
like Mr. Stephen Guest, and to care about his having 
spoken slightingly of her before he had seen her, was cer¬ 
tainly unreasonable, and as soon as she was silent she be¬ 
gan to be ashamed of herself. It did not occur to her that 
her irritation was due to the pleasanter emotion which pre¬ 
ceded it, just as when we are satisfied with a sense of glow¬ 
ing warmth an innocent drop of cold water may fall upon 
us as a sudden smart. 

Stephen w T as too well-bred not to seem unaware that the 
previous conversation could have been felt embarrassing, 
and at. once began to talk of impersonal matters, ask¬ 
ing Lucy if she knew when the bazaar was at length to 
take place, so that there might be some hope of seeing 
her rain the influence of her eyes on objects more grateful 


THE GREAT TEMPTATION 411 

than those worsted flowers that were growing under her 
fingers. 

“ Some day next month, I believe,” said Lucy. “ But 
your sisters are doing more for it than I am; they are to 
have the largest stall.” 

“ Ah yes; but they carry on their manufactures in their 
own sitting-room, where I don’t intrude on them. I see 
you are not addicted to the fashionable vice of fancy-work, 
Miss Tulliver,” said Stephen, looking at Maggie’s plain 
hemming. 

“ No,” said Maggie, “ I can do nothing more difficult or 
more elegant than shirt-making.” 

“ And your plain sewing is so beautiful, Maggie,” said 
Lucy, “ that I think I shall beg a few specimens of you to 
show as fancy-work. Your exquisite sewing is quite a mys¬ 
tery to me, you used to dislike that sort of work so much 
in the old days.” 

“ It is a mystery easily explained, dear,” said Maggie, 
looking up quietly. “ Plain sewing was the only thing I 
could get money by, so I was obliged to try and do it well.” 

Lucy, good and simple as she was, could not help blush¬ 
ing a little. She did not quite like that Stephen should 
know that; Maggie need not have mentioned it. Perhaps 
there was some pride in the confession, — the pride of pov¬ 
erty that will not be ashamed of itself. But if Maggie had 
been the queen of coquettes she could hardly have invented 
a means of giving greater piquancy to her beauty in Ste¬ 
phen’s eyes; I am not sure that the quiet admission of 
plain sewing and poverty would have done alone, but as¬ 
sisted by the beauty, they made Maggie more unlike other 
women even than she had seemed at first. 

“ But I can knit, Lucy,” Maggie went on, “ if that will be 
of any use for your bazaar.” 

“ Oh yes, of infinite use. I shall set you to work with 
scarlet wool to-morrow. But your sister is the most en¬ 
viable person,” continued Lucy, turning to Stephen, “ to 
have the talent of modelling. She is doing a wonderful 
bust of Dr. Kenn entirely from memory.” 


412 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


“ Why, if she can remember to put the eyes very near 
together, and the corners of the mouth very far apart, the 
likeness can hardly fail to be striking in St, Ogg’s.” 

“ Now that is very wicked of you,” said Lucy, looking 
rather hurt. “ I didn’t think you would speak disrespect¬ 
fully of Dr. Kenn.” 

“ I say anything disrespectful of Dr. Kenn? Heaven for¬ 
bid! But I am not bound to respect a libellous bust of 
him. I think Kenn one of the finest fellows in the world. 
I don’t care much about the tall candlesticks he has put on 
the communion-table, and I shouldn’t like to spoil my tem¬ 
per by getting up to early prayers every morning. But 
he’s the only man I ever knew personally who seems to me 
to have anything of the real apostle in him, — a man who 
has eight hundred a year and is contented with deal fur¬ 
niture and boiled beef because he gives away two-thirds of 
his income. That was a very fine thing of him, — taking 
into his house that poor lad Grattan, who shot his mother 
by accident. He sacrifices more time than a less busy man 
could spare, to save the poor fellow from getting into a 
morbid state of mind about it. He takes the lad out with 
him constantly, I see.” 

“ That is beautiful,” said Maggie, who had let her work 
fall, and was listening with keen interest. “ I never knew 
any one who did such things.” 

“ And one admires that sort of action in Kenn all the 
more,” said Stephen, “ because his manners in general are 
rather cold and severe. There’s nothing sugary and maud¬ 
lin about him.” 

“ Oh, I think he’s a perfect character!” said Lucy, with 
pretty enthusiasm. 

“ No; there I can’t agree with you,” said Stephen, shak¬ 
ing his head with sarcastic gravity. 

“Now, what fault can you point out in him?” 

“ He’s an Anglican.” 

“ Well, those are the right views, I think,” said Lucy, 
gravely. 

“ That settles the question in the abstract,” said Stephen, 


THE GREAT TEMPTATION 


413 


“ but not from a parliamentary point of view. He has set 
the Dissenters and the Church people by the ears; and a 
rising senator like myself, of whose services the country is 
very much in need, will find it inconvenient when he puts 
up for the honor of representing St. Ogg’s in Parliament.” 

“ Do you really think of that ? ” said Lucy, her eyes 
brightening with a proud pleasure that made her neglect 
the argumentative interests of Anglicanism. 

“ Decidedly, whenever old Mr. Leyburn’s public spirit 
and gout induce him to give way. My father’s heart is set 
on it; and gifts like mine, you know ” — here Stephen drew 
himself up, and rubbed his large white hands over his hair 
with playful self-admiration — “ gifts like mine involve 
great responsibilities. Don’t you think so, Miss Tullivcr? ” 

“Yes,” said Maggie, smiling, but not looking up; “so 
much fluency and self-possession should not be wasted en¬ 
tirely on private occasions.” 

“ Ah, I see how much penetration you have,” said Ste¬ 
phen. “ You have discovered already that I am talkative 
and impudent. Now superficial people never discern that, 
owing to my manner, I suppose.” 

“ She doesn’t look at me when I talk of myself,” he 
thought, while his listeners were laughing. “ I must try 
other subjects.” 

Did Lucy intend to be present at the meeting of the 
Book Club next week? was the next question. Then fol¬ 
lowed the recommendation to choose Southey’s Life of 
Cowper, unless she were inclined to be philosophical, and 
startle the ladies of St. Ogg’s by voting for one of the Bridge- 
water Treatises. Of course Lucy wished to know what 
these alarmingly learned books were; and as it is always 
pleasant to improve the minds of ladies by talking to them 
at ease on subjects of which they know nothing, Stephen 
became quite brilliant in an account of Buckland’s Treatise, 
which he had just been reading. He was rewarded by see¬ 
ing Maggie let her work fall, and gradually get so absorbed 
in his wonderful geological story that she sat looking at 
him, leaning forward with crossed arms, and with an en- 


414 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


tire absence of self-consciousness, as if he had been the 
snuffiest of old professors, and she a downy-lipped alumnus. 
He was so fascinated by the clear, large gaze that at last 
he forgot to look away from it occasionally toward Lucy; 
but she, sweet child, was only rejoicing that Stephen was 
proving to Maggie how clever he was, and that they would 
certainly be good friends after all. 

“ I will bring you the book, shall I, Miss Tulliver? ” said 
Stephen, when he found the stream of his recollections run¬ 
ning rather shallow. “ There are many illustrations in it 
that you will like to see.” 

“ Oh, thank you,” said Maggie, blushing with returning 
self-consciousness at this direct address, and taking up her 
work again. 

“ No, no,” Lucy interposed. “ I must forbid your plung¬ 
ing Maggie in books. I shall never get her away from them; 
and I want her to have delicious do-nothing days, filled 
with boating and chatting and riding and driving; that is 
the holiday she needs.” 

“ Apropos! ” said Stephen, looking at his watch. “ Shall 
we go out for a row’ on the river now 7 ? The tide will suit 
for us to go the Tofton w r ay, and we can walk back.” 

That was a delightful proposition to^Maggie, for it was 
years since she had been on the river. When she was gone 
to put on her bonnet, Lucy lingered to give an order to 
the servant, and took the opportunity of telling Stephen 
that Maggie had no objection to seeing Philip, so that it 
was a pity she had sent that note the day before yesterday. 
But she would write another to-morrow and invite him. 

“ Ill call and beat him up to-morrow,” said Stephen, 
“ and bring him with me in the evening, shall I? My sisters 
will want to call on you when I tell them your cousin is with 
you. I must leave the field clear for them in the morning.” 

“ Oh yes, pray bring him,” said Lucy. “ And you will 
like Maggie, sha’n’t you? ” she added, in a beseeching tone. 
“Isn’t she a dear, noble-looking creature? ” 

“ Too tall,” said Stephen, smiling down upon her, “ and 
a little too fiery. She is not my type of woman, you know.” 


THE GREAT TEMPTATION 


415 


Gentlemen, you are aware, are apt to impart these im¬ 
prudent confidences to ladies concerning their unfavorable 
opinion of sister fair ones. That is why so many women 
have the advantage of knowing that they are secretly re¬ 
pulsive to men who have self-denyingly made ardent love 
to them. And hardly anything could be more distinctly 
characteristic of Lucy than that she both implicitly believed 
what Stephen said, and was determined that Maggie should 
not know it. But you, who have a higher logic than the 
verbal to guide you, have already foreseen, as the direct 
sequence to that unfavorable opinion of Stephen's, that he 
walked down to the boathouse calculating, by the aid of a 
vivid imagination, that Maggie must give him her hand at 
least twice in consequence of this pleasant boating plan, and 
that a gentleman who wishes ladies to look at him is ad¬ 
vantageously situated when he is rowing them in a boat. 
What then? Had he fallen in love with this surprising 
daughter of Mrs. Tulliver at first sight? 'Certainly not. 
Such passions are never heard of in real life. Besides, he 
was in love already, and half-engaged to the dearest little 
creature in the world; and he was not a man to make a 
fool of himself in any way. But when one is five-and- 
twenty, one has not chalk-stones at one’s finger-ends that 
the touch of a handsome girl should be entirely indifferent. 
It was perfectly natural and safe to admire beauty and en¬ 
joy looking at it, — at least under such circumstances as 
the present. And there was really something very in¬ 
teresting about this girl, with her poverty and troubles; it 
was gratifying to see the friendship between the two cousins. 
Generally, Stephen admitted, he was not fond of women 
who had any peculiarity of character, but here the peculi¬ 
arity seemed really of a superior kind; and provided one 
is not obliged to marry such women, why, they certainly 
make a variety in social intercourse. 

Maggie did not fulfil Stephen's hope by looking at him 
during the first quarter of an hour; her eyes were too full 
of the old banks that she knew so well. She felt lonely, cut 
off from Philip, — the only person who had ever seemed to 


416 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


love her devotedly, as she had always longed to be loved. 
But presently the rhythmic movement of the oars attracted 
her, and she thought she should like to learn how to row. 
This roused her from her reverie, and she asked if she might 
take an oar. It appeared that she required much teach¬ 
ing, and she became ambitious. The exercise brought the 
warm blood into her cheeks, and made her inclined to take 
her lesson merrily. 

“ I shall not be satisfied until I can manage both oars, 
and row you and Lucy,” she said, looking very bright as 
she stepped out of the boat. Maggie, we know, was apt 
to forget the thing she was doing, and she had chosen an 
inopportune moment for her remark; her foot slipped, but 
happily Mr. Stephen Guest held her hand, and kept her up 
with a firm grasp. 

“ You have not hurt yourself at all, I hope? ” he said, 
bending to look in her face with anxiety. It was very 
charming to be taken care of in that kind, graceful manner 
by some one taller and stronger than one’s self. Maggie 
had never felt just in the same way before. 

When they reached home again, they found uncle and 
aunt Pullet seated with Mrs. Tulliver in the drawing-room, 
and Stephen hurried away, asking leave to come again in 
the evening. 

“ And pray bring with you the volume of Purcell that 
you took away,” said Lucy. “ I want Maggie to hear your 
best songs.” 

Aunt Pullet, under the certainty that Maggie would be 
invited to go out with Lucy, probably to Park House, was 
much shocked at the shabbiness of her clothes, which, when 
witnessed by the higher society of St. Ogg’s, would be a 
discredit to the family, that demanded a strong and prompt 
remedy; and the consultation as to what would be most 
suitable to this end among the superfluities of Mrs. Pullet’s 
wardrobe was one that Lucy as well as Mrs. Tulliver entered 
into with some zeal. Maggie must really have an evening 
dress as soon as possible, and she was about the same height 
as aunt Pullet. 


THE GREAT TEMPTATION 


417 


“ But she’s so much broader across the shoulders than I 
am, it’s very ill-convenient,” said Mrs. Pullet, “ else she 
might wear that beautiful black brocade o’ mine without 
any alteration; and her arms are beyond everything,” 
added Mrs. Pullet, sorrowfully, as she lifted Maggie’s large 
round arm. “ She’d never get my sleeves on.” 

“ Oh, never mind that, aunt; send us the dress,” said 
Lucy. “ I don’t mean Maggie to have long sleeves, and I 
have abundance of black lace for trimming. Her arms will 
look beautiful.” 

“ Maggie’s arms are a pretty shape,” said Mrs. Tulliver. 
“ They’re like mine used to be, only mine was never brown; 
I wish she’d had our family skin.” 

“ Nonsense, aunty!” said Lucy, patting her aunt Tul¬ 
liver’s shoulder, “ you don’t understand those things. A 
painter would think Maggie’s complexion beautiful.” 

“ Maybe, my dear,” said Mrs. Tulliver, submissively. 
“ You know better than I do. Only when I was young 
a brown skin wasn’t thought well on among respectable 
folks.” 

“ No,” said uncle Pullet, who took intense interest in 
the ladies’ conversation as he sucked his lozenges. “ Though 
there was a song about the ‘ Nut-brown Maid ’ too; I think 
she was crazy, — crazy Kate, — but I can’t justly remem¬ 
ber.” 

“ Oh dear, dear!” said Maggie, laughing, but impatient; 

I think that will be the end of my brown skin, if it is 
always to be talked about so much.” 


CHAPTER III 

CONFIDENTIAL MOMENTS 

W HEN Maggie went up to her bedroom that night, it 
appeared that she was not at all inclined to undress. 
She set down her candle on the first table that presented it- 


418 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


self, and began to walk up and down her room, which was a 
large one, with a firm, regular, and rather rapid step, which 
showed that the exercise was the instinctive vent of strong 
excitement. Her eyes and cheeks had an almost feverish 
brilliancy; her head was thrown backward, and her hands 
were clasped with the palms outward, and with that ten¬ 
sion of the arms which is apt to accompany mental ab¬ 
sorption. 

Had anything remarkable happened? 

Nothing that you are not likely to consider in the highest 
degree unimportant. She had been hearing some fine music 
sung by a fine bass voice, — but then it was sung in a pro¬ 
vincial, amateur fashion, such as would have left a critical 
ear much to desire. And she was conscious of having been 
looked at a great deal, in rather a furtive manner, from 
beneath a pair of well-marked horizontal eyebrows, with a 
glance that seemed somehow to have caught the vibratory 
influence of the voice. Such things could have had no per¬ 
ceptible effect on a thoroughly well-educated young lady, 
with a perfectly balanced mind, who had had all the ad¬ 
vantages of fortune, training, and refined society. But if 
Maggie had been that young lady, you would probably have 
known nothing about her: her life would have had so few 
I vicissitudes that it could hardly have been written; for the 
happiest women, like the happiest nations, have no history. 

In poor Maggie’s highly-strung, hungry nature, — just 
come away from a third-rate schoolroom, with all its jarring 
sounds and petty round of tasks, — these apparently trivial 
causes had the effect of rousing and exalting her imagination 
in a way that was mysterious to herself. It was not that 
she thought distinctly of Mr. Stephen Guest, or dwelt on the 
indications that he looked at her with admiration; it was 
rather that she felt the half-remote presence of a world of 
love and beauty and delight, made up of vague, mingled 
images from all the poetry and romance she had ever read, 
or had ever woven in her dreamy reveries. Her mind 
glanced back once or twice to the time when she had courted 
privation, when she had thought all longing, all impatience 


THE GREAT TEMPTATION 


419 


was subdued; but that condition seemed irrecoverably gone, 
and she recoiled from the remembrance of it. No prayer, no 
striving now, would bring back that negative peace; the 
battle of her life, it seemed, was not to be decided in that 
short and easy way, — by perfect renunciation at the very 
threshold of her youth. The music was vibrating in her still, 
— Purcell’s music with its wild passion and fancy, — and 
she could not stay in the recollection of that bare, lonely 
past. She was in her brighter aerial world again, when a 
little tap came at the door; of course it was her cousin, who 
entered in ample white dressing-gown. 

“ Why, Maggie, you naughty child, haven’t you begun to 
undress ? ” said Lucy, in astonishment. “ I promised not to 
come and talk to you, because I thought you must be tired. 
But here you are, looking as if you were ready to dress for 
a ball. Come, come, get on your dressing-gown and unplait 
your hair.” 

“ Well, you are not very forward,” retorted Maggie, 
hastily reaching her own pink cotton gown, and looking at 
Lucy’s light-brown hair brushed back in curly disorder. 

“ Oh, I have not much to do. I shall sit down and talk to 
you till I see you are really on the way to bed.” 

While Maggie stood and unplaited her long black hair 
over her pink drapery, Lucy sat down near the toilette- 
table, watching her with affectionate eyes, and head a little 
aside, like a pretty spaniel. If it appears to you at all in¬ 
credible that young ladies should be led on to talk confiden¬ 
tially in a situation of this kind, I will beg you to remember 
that human life furnishes many exceptional cases. 

“ You really have enjoyed the music to-night, haven’t you, 
Maggie? ” 

“ Oh yes, that is what prevented me from feeling sleepy. 
I think I should have no other mortal wants, if I could al¬ 
ways have plenty of music. It seems to infuse strength into 
my limbs, and ideas into my brain. Life seems to go on 
without effort, when I am filled with music. At other 
times one is conscious of carrying a weight.” 

And Stephen has a splendid voice, hasn’t he? ” 


420 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


“ Well, perhaps we are neither of us judges of that/’ said 
Maggie, laughing, as she seated herself and tossed her long 
hair back. “ You are not impartial, and 1 think any barrel- 
organ splendid.” 

“ But tell me what you think of him, now. Tell me ex¬ 
actly; good and bad too.” 

“ Oh, I think you should humiliate him a little. A lover 
should not be so much at ease, and so self-confident. He 
ought to tremble more.” 

“ Nonsense, Maggie! As if any one could tremble at me! 
You think he is conceited, I see that. But you don’t dis¬ 
like him, do you ? ” 

“ Dislike him! No. Am I in the habit of seeing such 
charming people, that I should be very difficult to please? 
Besides, how could I dislike any one that promised to make 
you happy, my dear thing! ” Maggie pinched Lucy’s 
dimpled chin. 

“ We shall have more music to-morrow evening,” said 
Lucy, looking happy already, “ for Stephen will bring Philip 
Wakem with him.” 

“ Oh, Lucy, I can’t see him,” said Maggie, turning pale. 
“ At least, I could not see him without Tom’s leave.” 

“ Is Tom such a tyrant as that ? ” said Lucy, surprised. 
“ I’ll take the responsibility, then, — tell him it was my 
fault.” 

“ But, dear,” said Maggie, falteringly, “ I promised Tom 
very solemnly, before my father’s death, — I promised him 
I would not speak to Philip without his knowledge and con¬ 
sent. And I have a great dread of opening the subject with 
Tom, — of getting into a quarrel with him again.” 

“ But I never heard of anything so strange and unreason¬ 
able. What harm can poor Philip have done? May I speak 
to Tom about it? ” 

“ Oh no, pray don’t dear,” said Maggie. “ I’ll go to him 
myself to-morrow, and tell him that you wish Philip to 
come. I’ve thought before of asking him to absolve me from 
my promise, but I’ve not had the courage to determine 
on it ” 


THE GREAT TEMPTATION 421 

They were both silent for some moments, and then Lucy 
said, — 

“ Maggie, you have secrets from me, and I have none 
from you.” 

Maggie looked meditatively away from Lucy. Then she 
turned to her and said, “ I should like to tell you about 
Philip. But, Lucy, you must not betray that you know it 
to any one, — least of all to Philip himself, or to Mr. 
Stephen Guest.” 

The narrative lasted long, for Maggie had never before 
known the relief of such an outpouring; she had never be¬ 
fore told Lucy anything of her inmost life; and the sweet 
face bent toward her with sympathetic interest, and the 
little hand pressing hers, encouraged her to speak on. On 
two points only she was not expansive. She did not betray 
fully what still rankled in her mind as Tom’s great offence, 
— the insults he had heaped on Philip. Angry as the re¬ 
membrance still made her, she could not bear that any one 
else should know it at all, both for Tom’s sake and Philip’s. 
And she could not bear to tell. Lucy of the last scene between 
her father and Wakem, though it was this scene which she 
had ever since felt to be a new barrier between herself and 
Philip. She merely said, she saw now that Tom was, on the 
whole, right in regarding any prospect of love and marriage 
between her and Philip as put out of the question by the 
relation of the two families. Of course Philip’s father would 
never consent. 

“ There, Lucy, you have had my story,” said Maggie, 
smiling, with the tears in her eyes. “ You see I am like Sir 
Andrew Aguecheek. I was adored once.” 

“ Ah, now I see how it is you know Shakespeare and 
everything, and have learned so much since you left school; 
which always seemed to me witchcraft before, — part of 
your general uncanniness,” said Lucy. 

She mused a little with her eyes downward, and then 
added, looking at Maggie, “ It is very beautiful that you 
should love Philip; I never thought such a happiness would 
befall him. And in my opinion, you ought not to give him 


422 MILL ON THE FLOSS 

up. There are obstacles now; but they may be done away 
with in time.” 

Maggie shook her head. 

“ Yes, yes,” persisted Lucy; “ I can’t help being hopeful 
about it. There is something romantic in it, — out of the 
common way, — just what everything that happens to you 
ought to be. And Philip will adore you like a husband in a 
fairy tale. Oh, I shall puzzle my small brain to contrive 
some plot that will bring everybody into the right mind, so 
that you may marry Philip when I marry — somebody else. 
Wouldn’t that be a pretty ending to all my poor, poor 
Maggie’s troubles ? ” 

Maggie tried to smile, but shivered, as if she felt a sudden 
chill. 

“ Ah, dear, you are cold,” said Lucy. “ You must go to 
bed; and so must I. I dare not think what time it is.” 

They kissed each other, and Lucy went away, possessed of 
a confidence which had a strong influence over her subse¬ 
quent impressions. Maggie had been thoroughly sincere; 
her nature had never found it easy to be otherwise. But 
confidences are sometimes blinding, even when they are 
sincere. 


CHAPTER IV 

BROTHER AND SISTER 

M AGGIE was obliged to go to Tom’s lodgings in the 
middle of the day, when he would be coming in to 
dinner, else she would not have found him at home. He was 
not lodging with entire strangers. Our friend Bob Jakin 
had, with Mumps’s tacit consent, taken not only a wife 
about eight months ago, but also one of those queer old 
houses, pierced with surprising passages, by the water-side, 
where, as he observed, his wife and mother could keep 
themselves out of mischief by letting out two “ pleasure- 
boats,” in which he had invested some of his savings, and by 


THE GREAT TEMPTATION 


423 


taking in a lodger for the parlor and spare bedroom. Un¬ 
der these circumstances, what could be better for the in¬ 
terests of all parties, sanitary considerations apart, than 
that the lodger should be Mr. Tom? 

It was Bob's wife who opened the door to Maggie. She 
was a tiny woman, with the general physiognomy of a Dutch 
doll, looking, in comparison with Bob's mother, who filled 
up the passage in the rear, very much like one of those hu¬ 
man figures which the artist finds conveniently standing 
near a colossal statue to show the proportions. The 
tiny woman curtsied and looked up at Maggie with some 
awe as soon as she had opened the door; but the words, 
“ Is my brother at home?" which Maggie uttered smil¬ 
ingly, made her turn round with sudden excitement, and 
say,— 

“Eh, mother, mother — tell Bob!—it's Miss Maggie! 
Come in, Miss, for goodness do," she went on, opening a 
side door, and endeavoring to flatten her person against the 
wall to make the utmost space for the visitor. 

Sad recollections crowded on Maggie as she entered the 
small parlor, which was now all that poor Tom had to call 
by the name of “ home," — that name which had once, so 
many years ago, meant for both of them the same sum of 
dear familiar objects. But everything was not strange to 
her in this new room; the first thing her eyes dwelt on was 
the large old Bible, and the sight was not likely to disperse 
the old memories. She stood without speaking. 

“ If you please to take the privilege o' sitting down, Miss," 
said Mrs. Jakin, rubbing her apron over a perfectly clean 
chair, and then lifting up the corner of that garment and 
holding it to her face with an air of embarrassment, as she 
looked wonderingly at Maggie. 

“ Bob is at home, then ? " said Maggie, recovering herself, 
and smiling at the bashful Dutch doll. 

“ Yes, Miss; but I think he must be washing and dressing 
himself; I’ll go and see," said Mrs. Jakin, disappearing. 

But she presently came back walking with new courage a 
little way behind her husband, who showed the brilliancy of 


424 MILL ON THE FLOSS 

his blue eyes and regular white teeth in the doorway, bow¬ 
ing respectfully. 

“How do you do, Bob?” said Maggie, coming forward 
and putting out her hand to him; “ I always meant to pay 
your wife a visit, and I shall come another day on purpose 
for that, if she will let me. But I was obliged to come to-day 
to speak to my brother.” 

“ He’ll be in before long, Miss. He’s doin’ finely, Mr. Tom 
is; he’ll be one o’ the first men hereabouts, — you’ll see 
that.” 

“ Well, Bob, I’m sure he’ll be indebted to you, whatever 
he becomes; he said so himself only the other night, when 
he was talking of you.” 

“ Eh, Miss, that’s his way o’ takin’ it. But I think the 
more on’t when he says a thing, because his tongue doesn’t 
overshoot him as mine does. Lors! I’m no better nor a 
tilted bottle, I ar’n’t, — I can’t stop mysen when once I 
begin. But you look rarely, Miss; it does me good to see 
you. What do you say now, Prissy?” — here Bob turned 
to his wife, — “Isn’t it all come true as I said? Though 
there isn’t many sorts o’ goods as I can’t overpraise when I 
set my tongue to’t.” 

Mrs. Bob’s small nose seemed to be following the example 
of her eyes in turning up reverentially toward Maggie, but 
she was able now to smile and curtsy, and say, “ I’d looked 
forrard like aenything to seein’ you, Miss, for my husband’s 
tongue’s been runnin’ on you, like as if he was light-headed, 
iver since first he come a-courtin’ on me.” 

“ Well, well,” said Bob, looking rather silly. “ Go an’ see 
after the taters, else Mr. Tom ’ull have to wait for ’em.” 

“I hope Mumps is friendly with Mrs. Jakin, Bob,” said 
Maggie, smiling. “ I remember you used to say he wouldn’t 
like your marrying.” 

“ Eh, Miss,” said Bob, “ he made up his mind to’t when 
he see’d what a little un she was. He pretends not to see 
her mostly, or else to think as she isn’t full-growed. But 
about Mr. Tom, Miss,” said Bob, speaking lower and look¬ 
ing serious, “ he’s as close as a iron biler, he is; but I’m a 


THE GREAT TEMPTATION 


425 


’cutish chap, an’ when I’ve left off carrying my pack, an’ 
am at a loose end, I’ve got more brains nor I know what to 
do wi’, an’ I’m forced to busy myself wi’ other folks’s in¬ 
sides. An’ it worrets me as Mr. Tom’ll sit by himself so 
glumpish, a-knittin’ his brow, an’ a-lookin’ at the fire of a 
night. He should be a bit livelier now, a fine young fellow 
like him. My wife says, when she goes in sometimes, an’ he 
takes no notice of her, he sits lookin’ into the fire, and 
frownin’ as if he was watchin’ folks at work in it.” 

“ He thinks so much about business,” said Maggie. 

“Ay,” said Bob, speaking lower; “but do you think it’s 
nothin’ else, Miss? He’s close, Mr. Tom is; but I’m a ’cute 
chap, I am, an’ I thought tow’rt last Christmas as I’d found 
out a soft place in him. It was about a little black spaniel 
— a rare bit o’ breed — as he made a fuss to get. But since 
then summat’s come over him, as he’s set his teeth again’ 
things more nor iver, for all he’s had such good luck. An’ 
I wanted to tell you, Miss, ’cause I thought you might work 
it out of him a bit, now you’re come. He’s a deal too lonely, 
and doesn’t go into company enough.” 

“ I’m afraid I have very little power over him, Bob,” said 
Maggie, a good deal moved by Bob’s suggestion. It was a 
totally new idea to her, mind that Tom could have his love 
troubles. Poor fellow! —and in love with Lucy too! But 
it was perhaps a mere fancy of Bob’s too officious brain. 
The present of the dog meant nothing more than cousinship 
and gratitude. But Bob had already said, “ Here’s Mr. 
Tom,” and the outer door was opening. 

“ There’s no time to spare, Tom,” said Maggie, as soon 
as Bob left the room. “ I must tell you at once what I came 
about, else I shall be hindering you from taking your 
dinner.” 

Tom stood with his back against the chimney-piece, and 
Maggie was seated opposite the light. He noticed that she 
was tremulous, and he had a presentiment of the subject 
she was going to spe^k about. The presentiment made his 
voice colder and harder as he said, “ What is it? ” 

This tone roused a spirit of resistance in Maggie, and she 


426 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


put her request in quite a different form from the one she 
had predetermined on. She rose from her seat, and, looking 
straight at Tom, said,— 

“ I want you to absolve me from my promise about Philip 
Wakem. Or rather, I promised you not to see him without 
telling you. I am come to tell you that I wish to see him.” 

“ Very well,” said Tom, still more coldly. 

But Maggie had hardly finished speaking in that chill, de¬ 
fiant manner, before she repented, and felt the dread of 
alienation from her brother. 

“ Not for myself, dear Tom. Don’t be angry. I shouldn’t 
have asked it, only that Philip, you know, is a friend of 
Lucy’s and she wishes him to come, has invited him to come 
this evening; and I told her I couldn’t see him without tell¬ 
ing you. I shall only see him in the presence of other people. 
There will never be anything secret between us again.” 

Tom looked away from Maggie, knitting his brow more 
strongly for a little while. Then he turned to her and said, 
slowly and emphatically,— 

“ You know what is my feeling on that subject, Maggie. 
There is no need for my repeating anything I said a year 
ago. While my father was living, I felt bound to use the 
utmost power over you, to prevent you from disgracing him 
as well as yourself, and all of us. But now I must leave you 
to your own choice. You wish to be independent; you told 
me so after my father’s death. My opinion is not changed. 
If you think of Philip Wakem as a lover again, you must 
give up me.” 

“I don’t wish it, dear Tom, at least as things are; I see 
that it would lead to misery. But I shall soon go away to 
another situation, and I should like to be friends with him 
again while I am here. Lucy wishes it.” 

The severity of Tom’s face relaxed a little. 

“ I shouldn’t mind your seeing him occasionally at my 
uncle’s — I don’t want you to make a fuss on the subject. 
But I have no confidence in you, Maggie. You would be 
led away to do anything.” 

That was a cruel word. Maggie’s lip began to tremble. 


THE GREAT TEMPTATION 


427 


“ Why will you say that, Tom? It is very hard of you. 
Have I not done and borne everything as well as I could? 

And I kept my word to you — when — when- My life 

has not been a happy one, any more than yours/’ 

She was obliged to be childish; the tears would come. 
When Maggie was not angry, she was as dependent on kind 
or cold words as a daisy on the sunshine or the cloud; the 
need of being loved would always subdue her, as, in old days, 
it subdued her in the worm-eaten attic. The brother’s good¬ 
ness came uppermost at this appeal, but it could only show 
itself in Tom’s fashion. He put his hand gently on her arm, 
and said, in the tone of a kind pedagogue, — 

“ Now listen to me, Maggie. I’ll tell you what I mean. 
You’re always in extremes; you have no judgment and self- 
command; and yet you think you know best, and will not 
submit to be guided. You know I didn’t wish you to take 
a situation. My aunt Pullet was willing to give you a good 
home, and you might have lived respectably amongst your 
relations, until I could have provided a home for you with 
my mother. And that is what I should like to do. I wished 
my sister to be a lady, and I would always have taken care 
of you, as my father desired, until you were well married. 
But your ideas and mine never accord, and you will not 
give way. Yet you might have sense enough to see that a 
brother, who goes out into the world and mixes with men, 
necessarily knows better what is right and respectable for 
his sister than she can know herself. You think I am not 
kind; but my kindness can only be directed by what I be¬ 
lieve to be good for you.” 

“ Yes, I know, dear Tom,” said Maggie, still half-sobbing, 
but trying to control her tears. “ I know you would do a 
great deal for me; I know how you work, and don’t spare 
yourself. I am grateful to you. But, indeed, you can’t 
quite judge for me; our natures are very different. You 
don’t know how differently things affect me from what they 
do you.” 

“ Yes, I do. know; I know it too well. I know how differ¬ 
ently you must feel about all that affects our family, and 


428 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


your own dignity as a young woman, before you could think 
of receiving secret addresses from Philip Wakem. If it was 
not disgusting to me in every other way, I should object to 
my sister's name being associated for a moment with that of 
a young man whose father must hate the very thought of us 
all, and would spurn you. With any one but you, I should 
think it quite certain that what you witnessed just before 
my father's death would secure you from ever thinking 
again of Philip Wakem as a lover. But I don’t feel certain 
of it with you; I never feel certain about anything with you. 
At one time you take pleasure in a sort of perverse self- 
denial, and at another you have not resolution to resist a 
thing that you know to be wrong.” 

There was a terrible cutting truth in Tom’s words,— 
that hard rind of truth which is discerned by unimaginative, 
unsympathetic minds. Maggie always writhed under this 
judgment of Tom’s; she rebelled and was humiliated in the 
same moment; it seemed as if he held a glass before her to 
show her her own folly and weakness, as if he were a pro¬ 
phetic voice predicting her future fallings; and yet, all the 
while, she judged him in return; she said inwardly that he 
was narrow and unjust, that he was below feeling those 
mental needs which were often the source of the wrong¬ 
doing or absurdity that made her life a planless riddle to 
him. 

She did not answer directly; her heart was too full, and 
she sat down, leaning her arm on the table. It was no use 
trying to make Tom feel that she was near to him. He al¬ 
ways repelled her. Her feeling under his words was com¬ 
plicated by the allusion to the last scene between her father 
and Wakem; and at length that painful, solemn memory 
surmounted the immediate grievance. No! She did not 
think of such things with frivolous indifference, and Tom 
must not accuse her of that. She looked up at him with a 
grave, earnest gaze and said, — 

“ I can’t make you think better of me, Tom, by anything 
I can say. But I am not so shut out from all your feelings 
as you believe me to be. I see as well as you do that from 


THE GREAT TEMPTATION 


429 


our position with regard to Philip’s father — not on other 
grounds — it would be unreasonable, it would be wrong, for 
us to entertain the idea of marriage; and I have given up 
thinking of him as a lover. I am telling you the truth, and 
you have no right to disbelieve me; I have kept my word 
to you, and you have never detected me in a falsehood. I 
should not only not encourage, I should carefully avoid, any 
intercourse with Philip on any other footing than of quiet 
friendship. You may think that I am unable to keep my 
resolutions; but at least you ought not to treat me with 
hard contempt on the ground of faults that I have not 
committed yet.” 

“ Well, Maggie,” said Tom, softening under this appeal, 
“ I don’t want to overstrain matters. I think, all things 
considered, it will be best for you to see Philip Wakem, if 
Lucy wishes him to come to the house. I believe what you 
say, — at least you believe it yourself, I know; I can only 
warn you. I wish to be as good a brother to you as you 
will let me.” 

There was a little tremor in Tom’s voice as he uttered the 
last words, and Maggie’s ready affection came back with as 
sudden a glow as when they were children, and bit their cake 
together as a sacrament of conciliation. She rose and laid 
her hand on Tom’s shoulder. 

“ Dear Tom, I know you mean to be good. I know you 
have had a great deal to bear, and have done a great deal. 
I should like to be a comfort to you, not to vex you. You 
don’t think I’m altogether naughty, now, do you? ” 

Tom smiled at the eager face; his smiles were very pleas¬ 
ant to see when they did come, for the gray eyes could be 
tender underneath the frown. 

“ No, Maggie.” 

“ I may turn out better than you expect.” 

“ I hope you will.” 

“ And may I come some day and make tea for you, and 
see this extremely small wife of Bob’s again? ” 

“Yes; but trot away now, for I’ve no more time to 
spare,” said Tom, looking at his watch. 


430 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


“ Not to give me a kiss? ” 

Tom bent to kiss her cheek, and then said, — 

“ There! Be a good girl. Tve got a great deal to think 
of to-day. I’m going to have a long consultation with my 
uncle Deane this afternoon.” 

“ You’ll come to aunt Glegg’s to-morrow ? We’re going 
all to dine early, that we may go there to tea. You must 
come; Lucy told me to say so.” 

“ Oh, pooh! I’ve plenty else to do,” said Tom, pulling 
his bell violently, and bringing down the small bell-rope. 

“ I’m frightened; I shall run away,” said Maggie, making 
a laughing retreat; while Tom, with masculine philosophy, 
flung the bell-rope to the farther end of the room; not very 
far either, — a touch of human experience which I flatter 
myself will come home to the bosoms of not a few substan¬ 
tial or distinguished men who were once at an early stage 
of their rise in the world, and were cherishing very large 
hopes in very small lodgings. 


CHAPTER V 

SHOWING THAT TOM HAD OPENED THE OYSTER 

A ND now w r e’ve settled this Newcastle business, Tom,” 
.said Mr. Deane, that same afternoon, as they were 
seated in the private room at the Bank together, “ there’s 
another matter I want to talk to you about. Since you’re 
likely to have rather a smoky, unpleasant time of it at New¬ 
castle for the next few weeks, you’ll want a good prospect of 
some sort to keep up your spirits.” 

Tom waited less nervously than he had done on a former 
occasion in this apartment, while his uncle took out his 
snuffbox and gratified each nostril with deliberate impar¬ 
tiality. 

“ You see, Tom,” said Mr. Deane at last, throwing him¬ 
self backward, “ the world goes on at a smarter pace now 


THE GREAT TEMPTATION 


431 


than it did when I was a young fellow. Why, sir, forty 
years ago, when I was much such a strapping youngster as 
you, a man expected to pull between the shafts the best 
part of his life, before he got the whip in his hand. The 
looms went slowish, and fashions didn’t alter quite so fast; 
I’d a best suit that lasted me six years. Everything was on 
a lower scale, sir, — in point of expenditure, I mean. It’s 
this steam, you see, that has made the difference; it drives 
on every wheel double pace, and the wheel of fortune along 
with ’em, as our Mr. Stephen Guest said at the anniversary 
dinner (he hits these things off wonderfully, considering he’s 
seen nothing of business). I don’t find fault with the change, 
as some people do. Trade, sir, opens a man’s eyes; and if 
the population is to get thicker upon the ground, as it’s do¬ 
ing, the world must use its wits at inventions of one sort or 
other. I know I’ve done my share as an ordinary man of 
business. Somebody has said it’s a fine thing to make two 
ears of corn grow where only one grew before; but, sir, it’s 
a fine thing, too, to further the exchange of commodities, 
and bring the grains of corn to the mouths that are hungry. 
And that’s our line of business; and I consider it as honor¬ 
able a position as a man can hold, to be connected with it.” 

Tom knew that the affair his uncle had to speak of was 
not urgent; Mr. Deane was too shrewd and practical a man 
to allow either his reminiscences or his snuff to impede the 
progress of trade. Indeed, for the last month or two, there 
had been hints thrown out to Tom which enabled him to 
guess that he was going to hear some proposition for his own 
benefit. With the beginning of the last speech he had 
stretched out his legs, thrust his hands in his pockets, and 
prepared himself for some introductory diffuseness, tending 
to show that Mr. Deane had succeeded by his own merit, 
and that what he had to say to young men in general was, 
that if they didn’t succeed, too, it was because of their own 
demerit. He was rather surprised, then, when his uncle put 
a direct question to him. 

“ Let me see, — it’s going on for seven years now since 
you applied to me for a situation, eh, Tom? ” 


432 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


“ Yes, sir; I’m three-and-twenty now,” said Tom. 

“Ah, it’s as well not to say that, though; for you’d pass 
for a good deal older, and age tells well in business. I re¬ 
member your coming very well; I remember I saw there 
was some pluck in you, and that was what made me give 
you encouragement. And I’m happy to say I was right; I’m 
not often deceived. I was naturally a little shy at pushing 
my nephew, but I’m happy to say you’ve done me credit, 
sir; and if I’d had a son o’ my own, I shouldn’t have been 
sorry to see him like you.” 

Mr. Deane tapped his box and opened it again, repeating 
in a tone of some feeling, “No, I shouldn’t have been sorry 
to see him like you.” 

“ I’m very glad I’ve given you satisfaction, sir; I’ve done 
my best,” said Tom, in his proud, independent way. 

“ Yes, Tom, you’ve given me satisfaction. I don’t speak 
of your conduct as a son; though that weighs with me in my 
opinion of you. But what I have to do with, as a partner 
in our firm, is the qualities you’ve shown as a man o’ busi¬ 
ness. Ours is a fine business, — a splendid concern, sir,— 
and there’s no reason why it shouldn’t go on growing; there’s 
a growing capital, and growing outlets for it; but there’s 
another thing that’s wanted for the prosperity of every con¬ 
cern, large or small, and that’s men to conduct it, — men of 
the right habits; none o’ your flashy fellows, but such as are 
to be depended on. Now this is what Mr. Guest and I see 
clear enough. Three years ago we took Gell into the con¬ 
cern; we gave him a share in the oil-mill. And why? Why, 
because Gell was a fellow whose services were worth a pre¬ 
mium. So it will always be, sir. So it was with me. And 
though Gell is pretty near ten years older than you, there 
are other points in your favor.” 

Tom was getting a little nervous as Mr. Deane went on 
speaking; he was conscious of something he had in his mind 
to say, which might not be agreeable to his uncle, simply 
because it was a new suggestion rather than an acceptance 
of the proposition he foresaw. 

“ It stands to reason,” Mr. Deane went on, when he had 


THE GREAT TEMPTATION 


433 


finished his new pinch, “ that your being my nephew weighs 
in your favor; but I don’t deny that if you’d been no rela¬ 
tion of mine at all, your conduct in that affair of Pelley’s 
bank would have led Mr. Guest and myself to make some 
acknowledgment of the service you’ve been to us; and, 
backed by your general conduct and business ability, it has 
made us determine on giving you a share in the business, — 
a share which we shall be glad to increase as the years go on. 
We think that’ll be better, on all grounds, than raising your 
salary. It’ll give you more importance, and prepare you 
better for taking some of the anxiety off my shoulders by 
and by. I’m equal to a good deal o’ work at present, thank 
God; but I’m getting older, — there’s no denying that. I 
told Mr. Guest I would open the subject to you; and when 
you come back from this northern business, we can go into 
particulars. This is a great stride for a young fellow of 
three-and-twenty, but I’m bound to say you’ve deserved it.” 

“ I’m very grateful to Mr. Guest and you, sir; of course 
I feel the most indebted to you , who first took me into the 
business, and have taken a good deal of pains with me since.” 

Tom spoke with a slight tremor, and paused after he had 
said this. 

“ Yes, yes,” said Mr. Deane. “ I don’t spare pains when 
I see they’ll be of any use. I gave myself some trouble with 
Gell, else he wouldn’t have been what he is.” 

“ But there’s one thing I should like to mention to you, 
uncle. I’ve never spoken to you of it before. If you re¬ 
member, at the time my father’s property was sold, there 
was some thought of your firm buying the Mill; I know you 
thought it would be a very good investment, especially if 
steam were applied.” 

“To be sure, to be sure. But Wakem outbid us; he’d 
made up his mind to that. He’s rather fond of carrying 
everything over other people’s heads.” 

“ Perhaps it’s of no use my mentioning it at present,” 
Tom went on, “ but I wish you to know what I have in my 
mind about the Mill. I’ve a strong feeling about it. It was 
my father’s dying wish that I should try and get it back 


434 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


again whenever I could; it was in his family for five genera¬ 
tions. I promised my father; and besides that, I’m attached 
to the place. I shall never like any other so well. And if it 
should ever suit your views to buy it for the firm, I should 
have a better chance of fulfilling my father’s wish. I 
shouldn’t have liked to mention the thing to you, only you’ve 
been kind enough to say my services have been of some 
value. And I’d give up a much greater chance in life for 
the sake of having the Mill again, — I mean having it in my 
own hands, and gradually working off the price.” 

Mr. Deane had listened attentively, and now looked 
thoughtful. 

“ I see, I see,” he said, after a while; “ the thing would be 
possible if there were any chance of Wakem’s parting with 
the property. But that I don’t see. He’s put that young 
Jetsome in the place; and he had his reasons when he bought 
it, I’ll be bound.” 

“ He’s a loose fish, that young Jetsome,” said Tom. “ He’s 
taking to drinking, and they say he’s letting the business go 
down. Luke told me about it, — our old miller. He says he 
sha’n’t stay unless there’s an alteration. I was thinking, if 
things went on that way, Wakem might be more willing to 
part with the Mill. Luke says he’s getting very sour about 
the way things are going on.” 

“ Well, I’ll turn it over, Tom. I must inquire into the 
matter, and go into it with Mr. Guest. But, you see, it’s 
rather striking out a new branch, and putting you to that, 
instead of keeping you where you are, which was what we’d 
wanted.” 

“ I should be able to manage more than the Mill when 
things were once set properly going, sir. I want to have 
plenty of work. There’s nothing else I care about much.” 

There was something rather sad in that speech from a 
young man of three-and-twenty, even in uncle Deane’s 
business-loving ears. 

“ Pooh, pooh! you’ll be having a wife to care about one 
of these days, if you get on at this pace in the world. But 
as to this Mill, we mustn’t reckon on our chickens too early. 


THE GREAT TEMPTATION 


435 


However, I promise you to bear it in mind, and when you 
come back well talk of it again. I am going to dinner now. 
Come and breakfast with us to-morrow morning, and say 
good-by to your mother and sister before you start.” 


CHAPTER VI 

ILLUSTRATING THE LAWS OF ATTRACTION 

I T IS evident to you now that Maggie had arrived at a 
moment in her life which must be considered by all pru¬ 
dent persons as a great opportunity for a young woman. 
Launched into the higher society of St. Ogg’s, with a strik¬ 
ing person, which had the advantage of being quite un¬ 
familiar to the majority of beholders, and with such mod¬ 
erate assistance of costume as you have seen foreshadowed 
in Lucy's anxious colloquy with aunt Pullet, Maggie was 
certainly at a new starting-point in life. At Lucy's first 
evening party, young Torry fatigued his facial muscles 
more than usual in order that “ the dark-eyed girl there in 
the corner ” might see him in all the additional style con¬ 
ferred by his eyeglass; and several young ladies went home 
intending to have short sleeves with black lace, and to plait 
their hair in a broad coronet at the back of their head,— 
“ That cousin of Miss Deane's looked so very well.” In 
fact, poor Maggie, with all her inward consciousness of a 
painful past and her presentiment of a troublous future, 
was on the way to become an object of some envy, — a topic 
of discussion in the newly established billiard-room, and be¬ 
tween fair friends who had no secrets from each other on 
the subject of trimmings. 

The Miss Guests, who associated chiefly on terms of con¬ 
descension with the families of St. Ogg's, and were the 
glass of fashion there, took some exception to Maggie's 
manners. She had a way of not assenting at once to the 
observations current in good society, and of saying that she 


436 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


didn’t know whether those observations were true or not, 
which gave her an air of gaucherie, and impeded the even 
flow of conversation; but it is a fact capable of an amiable 
interpretation that ladies are not the worst disposed to¬ 
ward a new acquaintance of their own sex because she has 
points of inferiority. And Maggie was so entirely with¬ 
out those pretty airs of coquetry which have the tradi¬ 
tional reputation of driving gentlemen to despair that she 
won some feminine pity for being so ineffective in spite of 
her beauty. She had not had many advantages, poor thing! 
and it must be admitted there was no pretension about her; 
her abruptness and unevenness of manner were plainly the 
result of her secluded and lowly circumstances. 

It was only a wonder that there was no tinge of vul¬ 
garity about her, considering what the rest of poor Lucy’s 
relations were — an allusion which always made the Miss 
Guests shudder a little. It was not agreeable to think of 
any connection by marriage with such people as the Gleggs 
and the Pullets; but it was of no use to contradict Stephen 
when once he had set his mind on anything, and certainly 
there was no possible objection to Lucy in herself, — no one 
could help liking her. She would naturally desire that the 
Miss Guests should behave kindly to this cousin of whom 
she was so fond, and Stephen would make a great fuss if 
they were deficient in civility. Under these circumstances 
the invitations to Park House were not wanting; and else¬ 
where, also, Miss Deane was too popular and too distin¬ 
guished a member of society in St. Ogg’s for any attention 
toward her to be neglected. 

Thus Maggie was introduced for the first time to the 
young lady’s life, and knew what it was to get up in the 
morning without any imperative reason for doing one thing 
more than another. This new sense of leisure and un¬ 
checked enjoyment amidst the soft-breathing airs and 
garden-scents of advancing spring — amidst the new abun¬ 
dance of music, and lingering strolls in the sunshine, and 
the delicious dreaminess of gliding on the river — could 
hardly be without some intoxicating effect on her, after her 


THE GREAT TEMPTATION 


437 


years of privation; and eyen in the first week Maggie began 
to be less haunted by her sad memories and anticipations. 
Life was certainly very pleasant just now; it was becoming 
very pleasant to dress in the evening, and to feel that she 
was one of the beautiful things of this spring-time. And 
there were admiring eyes always awaiting her now; she was 
no longer an unheeded person, liable to be chid, from whom 
attention was continually claimed, and on whom no one felt 
bound to confer any. 

It was pleasant, too, when Stephen and Lucy were gone 
out riding, to sit down at the piano alone, and find that 
the old fitness between her fingers and the keys remained, 
and revived, like a sympathetic kinship not to be worn 
out by separation; to get the tunes she had heard the 
evening before, and repeat them again and again until 
she had found out a way of producing them so as to 
make them a more pregnant passionate language to her. 
The mere concord of octaves was a delight to Maggie, and 
she would often take up a book of studies rather than any 
melody, that she might taste more keenly by abstraction 
the more primitive sensation of intervals. Not that her en¬ 
joyment of music was of the kind that indicates a great 
specific talent; it was rather that her sensibility to the su¬ 
preme excitement of music was only one form of that pas¬ 
sionate sensibility which belonged to her whole nature, and 
made her faults and virtues all merge in each other; made 
her affections sometimes an impatient demand, but also pre¬ 
vented her vanity from taking the form of mere feminine 
coquetry and device, and gave it the poetry of ambition. 

But you have known Maggie a long while, and need to be 
told, not her characteristics, but her history, which is a 
thing hardly to be predicted even from the completest 
knowledge of characteristics. For the tragedy of our lives 
is not created entirely from within. “ Character,” says 
Novalis, in one of his questionable aphorisms, — “ character 
is destiny.” But not the whole of our destiny. Hamlet, 
Prince of Denmark, was speculative and irresolute, and we 
have a great tragedy in consequence. But if his father had 


438 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


lived to a good old age, and his uncle had died an early 
death, we can conceive Hamlet’s having married Ophelia, 
and got through life with a reputation of sanity, notwith¬ 
standing many soliloquies, and some moody sarcasms toward 
the fair daughter of Polonius, to say nothing of the frankest 
incivility to his father-in-law. 

Maggie’s destiny, then, is at present hidden, and we must 
wait for it to reveal itself like the course of an unmapped 
river; we only know that the river is full and rapid, and 
that for all rivers there is the same final home. Under the 
charm of her new pleasures, Maggie herself was ceasing to 
think, with her eager prefiguring imagination, of her future 
lot; and her anxiety about her first interview with Philip 
was losing its predominance; perhaps, unconsciously to her¬ 
self, she was not sorry that the interview had been deferred. 

For Philip had not come the evening he was expected, and 
Mr. Stephen Guest brought word that he was gone to the 
coast, — probably, he thought, on a sketching expedition; 
but it was not certain when he would return. It was just 
like Philip, to go off in that way without telling any one. 
It was not until the twelfth day that he returned, to find 
both Lucy’s notes awaiting him; he had left before he knew 
of Maggie’s arrival. 

Perhaps one had need be nineteen again to be quite con¬ 
vinced of the feelings that were crowded for Maggie into 
those twelve days; of the length to which they were 
stretched for her by the novelty of her experience in them, 
and the varying attitudes of her mind. The early days of 
an acquaintance almost always have this importance for us, 
and fill up a larger space in our memory than longer subse¬ 
quent periods, which have been less filled with discovery and 
new impressions. There were not many hours in those 
twelve days in which Mr. Stephen Guest was not seated by 
Lucy’s side, or standing near her at the piano, or accom¬ 
panying her on some outdoor excursion; his attentions were 
clearly becoming more assiduous, and that was what every 
one had expected. Lucy was very happy, all the happier 
because Stephen’s society seemed to have become much 


THE GREAT TEMPTATION 


439 


more interesting and amusing since Maggie had been there. 
Playful discussions — sometimes serious ones — were going 
forward, in which both Stephen and Maggie revealed them¬ 
selves, to the admiration of the gentle, unobtrusive Lucy; 
and it more than once crossed her mind what a charming 
quartet they should have through life when Maggie mar¬ 
ried Philip. 

Is it an inexplicable thing that a girl should enjoy 
her lover’s society the more for the presence of a third 
person, and be without the slightest spasm of jealousy 
that the third person had the conversation habitually di¬ 
rected to her? Not when that girl is as tranquil-hearted as 
Lucy, thoroughly possessed with a belief that she knows the 
state of her companions’ affections, and not prone to the 
feelings which shake such a belief in the absence of positive 
evidence against it. Besides, it was Lucy by whom Stephen 
sat, to whom he gave his arm, to whom he appealed as the 
person sure to agree with him; and every day there was the 
same tender politeness toward her, the same consciousness 
of her wants and care to supply them. Was there really 
the same? It seemed to Lucy that there was more; and it 
was no wonder that the real significance of the change es¬ 
caped her. 

It was a subtle act of conscience in Stephen that even 
he himself was not aware of. His personal attentions to 
Maggie were comparatively slight, and there had even 
sprung up an apparent distance between them, that pre¬ 
vented the renewal of that faint resemblance to gallan¬ 
try into which he had fallen the first day in the boat. If 
Stephen came in when Lucy was out of the room, if Lucy 
left them together, they never spoke to each other; Stephen, 
perhaps, seemed to be examining books or music, and Maggie 
bent her head assiduously over her work. Each was op¬ 
pressively conscious of the other’s presence, even to the 
finger-ends. Yet each looked and longed for the same thing 
to happen the next day. Neither of them had begun to 
reflect on the matter, or silently to ask, “ To what does all 
this tend ? ” Maggie only Telt that life was revealing some- 


440 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


thing quite new to her; and she was absorbed in the direct, 
immediate experience, without any energy left for taking 
account of it and reasoning about it. Stephen wilfully ab¬ 
stained from self-questioning, and would not admit to him¬ 
self that he felt an influence which was to have any deter¬ 
mining effect on his conduct. And when Lucy came into 
the room again, they were once more unconstrained; Maggie 
could contradict Stephen, and laugh at him, and he could 
recommend to her consideration the example of that most 
charming heroine, Miss Sophia Western, who had a great 
“ respect for the understandings of men.” Maggie could 
look at Stephen, which, for some reason or other, she always 
avoided when they were alone; and he could even ask her 
to play his accompaniment for him, since Lucy’s fingers 
were so busy with that bazaar-work, and lecture her on 
hurrying the tempo, which was certainly Maggie’s weak 
point. 

One day — it was the day of Philip’s return — Lucy had 
formed a sudden engagement to spend the evening with Mrs. 
Kenn, whose delicate state of health, threatening to become 
confirmed illness through an attack of bronchitis, obliged 
her to resign her functions at the coming bazaar into the 
hands of other ladies, of whom she wished Lucy to be one. 
The engagement had been formed in Stephen’s presence, and 
he had heard Lucy promise to dine early and call at six 
o’clock for Miss Torry, who brought Mrs. Kenn’s request. 

I Here is another of the moral results of this idiotic 
bazaar,” Stephen burst forth, as soon as Miss Torry had left 
the room, — “ taking young ladies from the duties of the 
domestic hearth into scenes of dissipation among urn-rugs 
and embroidered reticules! I should like to know what is 
the proper function of women, if it is not to make reasons 
for husbands to stay at home, and still stronger reasons for 
bachelors to go out. If this goes on much longer, the bonds 
of society will be dissolved.” 

“ Well, it will not go on much longer,” said Lucy, laughing, 
“ for the bazaar is to take place on Monday week.” 

“Thank Heaven! ” said Stephen. “Kenn himself said 


THE GREAT TEMPTATION 


441 


the other day that he didn’t like this plan of making vanity 
do the work of charity; but just as the British public is not 
reasonable enough to bear direct taxation, so St. Ogg’s has 
not got force of motive enough to build and endow schools 
without calling in the force of folly.” 

“ Did he say so ? ” said little Lucy, her hazel eyes opening 
wide with anxiety. “ I never heard him say anything of that 
kind; I thought he approved of what we were doing.” 

“ I’m sure he approves you,” said Stephen, smiling at her 
affectionately; “ your conduct in going out to-night looks 
vicious, I own, but I know there is benevolence at the 
bottom of it.” 

“ Oh, you think too well of me,” said Lucy, shaking her 
head, with a pretty blush, and there the subject ended. But 
it was tacitly understood that Stephen would not come in 
the evening; and on the strength of that tacit understanding 
he made his morning visit the longer, not saying good-by 
until after four. 

Maggie was seated in the drawing-room, alone, shortly 
after dinner, with Minny on her lap, having left her uncle 
to his wine and his nap, and her mother to the compromise 
between knitting and nodding, which, when there was no 
company, she always carried on in the dining-room till tea- 
time. Maggie was stooping to caress the tiny silken pet, 
and comforting him for his mistress’s absence, when the 
sound of a footstep on the gravel made her look up, and she 
saw Mr. Stephen Guest walking up the garden, as if he had 
come straight from the river. It was very unusual to see 
him so soon after dinner! He often complained that their 
dinner-hour was late at Park House. Nevertheless, there 
he was, in his black dress; he had evidently been home, and 
must have come again by the river. Maggie felt her cheeks 
glowing and her heart beating; it was natural she should 
be nervous, for she was not accustomed to receive visitors 
alone. He had seen her look up through the open window, 
and raised his hat as he walked toward it, to enter that way 
instead of by the door. He blushed too, and certainly 
looked as foolish as a young man of some wit and self- 


442 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


possession can be expected to look, as he walked in with a 
roll of music in his hand, and said, with an air of hesitating 
improvisation, — 

“You are surprised to see me again, Miss Tulliver; I 
ought to apologize for coming upon you by surprise, but I 
wanted to come into the town, and I got our man to row 
me; so I thought I would bring these things from the Maid 
of Artois for your cousin; I forgot them this morning. Will 
you give them to her? ” 

“ Yes,” said Maggie, who had risen confusedly with Minny 
in her arms, and now, not quite knowing what else to do, 
sat down again. 

Stephen laid down his hat, with the music, which rolled 
on the floor, and sat down in the chair close by her. He had 
never done so before, and both he and Maggie were quite 
aware that it was an entirely new position. 

“Well, you pampered minion! ” said Stephen, leaning to 
pull the long curly ears that drooped over Maggie’s arm. It 
was not a suggestive remark, and as the speaker did not 
follow it up by further development, it naturally left the 
conversation at a standstill. It seemed to Stephen like 
some action in a dream that he was obliged to do, and 
wonder at himself all the while, — to go on stroking Minny’s 
head. Yet it was very pleasant; he only wished he dared 
look at Maggie, and that she would look at him, — let him 
have one long look into those deep, strange eyes of hers, 
and then he would be satisfied and quite reasonable after 
that. He thought it was becoming a sort of monomania 
with him, to want that long look from Maggie; and he was 
racking his invention continually to find out some means by 
which he could have it without its appearing singular and 
entailing subsequent embarrassment. As for Maggie, she 
had no distinct thought, only the sense of a presence like 
that of a closely hovering broad-winged bird in the dark¬ 
ness, for she was unable to look up, and saw nothing but 
Minny’s black wavy coat. 

But this must end some time, perhaps it ended very soon, 
and only seemed long, as a minute’s dream does. Stephen 


THE GREAT TEMPTATION 


443 


at last sat upright sideways in his chair, leaning one hand 
and arm over the back and looking at Maggie. What should 
he say? 

“ We shall have a splendid sunset, I think; sha’n’t you go 
out and see it? ” 

“ I don’t know,” said Maggie. Then courageously raising 
her eyes and looking out of the window, “ if I’m not playing 
cribbage with my uncle.” 

A pause; during which Minny is stroked again, but has 
sufficient insight not to be grateful for it, to growl rather. 

“ Do you like sitting alone ? ” 

A rather arch look came over Maggie’s face, and, just 
glancing at Stephen, she said, “ Would it be quite civil to 
say ‘ yes ’ ? ” 

“ It was rather a dangerous question for an intruder to 
ask,” said Stephen, delighted with that glance, and getting 
determined to stay for another. “ But you will have more 
than half an hour to yourself after I am gone,” he added, 
taking out his watch. “ I know Mr. Deane never comes in 
till half-past seven.” 

Another pause, during which Maggie looked steadily out 
of the window, till by a great effort she moved her head to 
look down at Minny’s back again, and said, — 

“ I wish Lucy had not been obliged to go out. We lose 
our music.” 

“ We shall have a new voice to-morrow night,” said Ste¬ 
phen. “ Will you tell your cousin that our friend Philip 
Wakem is come back? I saw him as I went home.” 

Maggie gave a little start, — it seemed hardly more than 
a vibration that passed from head to foot in an instant. 
But the new images summoned by Philip’s name dispersed 
half the oppressive spell she had been under. She rose from 
her chair with a sudden resolution and, laying Minny on his 
cushion, went to reach Lucy’s large work-basket from its 
corner. Stephen was vexed and disappointed; he thought 
perhaps Maggie didn’t like the name of Wakem to be men¬ 
tioned to her in that abrupt way, for he now recalled what 
Lucy had told him of the family quarrel. It was of no use 


444 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


to stay any longer. Maggie was seating herself at the table 
with her work, and looking chill and proud; and he —he 
looked like a simpleton for having come. A gratuitous, 
entirely superfluous visit of that sort was sure to make 
a man disagreeable and ridiculous. Of course it was pal¬ 
pable to Maggie’s thinking that he had dined hastily in his 
own room for the sake of setting off again and finding her 
alone. 

A boyish state of mind for an accomplished young gentle¬ 
man of five-and-twenty, not without legal knowledge! But 
a reference to history, perhaps, may make it not incredible. 

At this moment Maggie’s ball of knitting-wool -rolled along 
the ground, and she started up to reach it. Stephen rose, 
too, and, picking up the ball, met her with a vexed, com¬ 
plaining look that gave his eyes quite a new expression to 
Maggie, whose own eyes met them as he presented the ball 
to her. 

“ Good-by,” said Stephen, in a tone that had the same be¬ 
seeching discontent as his eyes. He dared not put out his 
hand; he thrust both hands into his tail-pockets as he spoke. 
Maggie thought she had perhaps been rude. 

“Won’t you stay?” she said timidly, not looking away, 
for that would have seemed rude again. 

“ No, thank you,” said Stephen, looking still into the half- 
unwilling, half-fascinated eyes, as a thirsty man looks to¬ 
ward the track of the distant brook. “ The boat is waiting 
for me. You’ll tell your cousin? ” 

“ Yes.” 

“ That I brought the music, I mean ? ” 

“ Yes ” 

“ And that Philip is come back ? ” 

“ Yes.” (Maggie did not notice Philip’s name this time.) 

“ Won’t you come out a little way into the garden? ” said 
Stephen, in a still gentler tone; but the next moment he was 
vexed that she did not say “ No,” for she moved away now 
toward the open window, and he was obliged to take his hat 
and walk by her side. But he thought of something to make 
him amends. 


THE GREAT TEMPTATION 445 

“ Do take my arm,” he said, in a low tone, as if it were a 
secret. 

There is something strangely winning to most women in 
that offer of the firm arm; the help is not wanted physically 
at that moment, but the sense of help, the presence of 
strength that is outside them and yet theirs, meets a con¬ 
tinual want of the imagination. Either on that ground or 
some other, Maggie took the arm. And they walked to¬ 
gether round the grassplot and under the drooping green of 
the laburnums, in the same dim, dreamy state as they had 
been in a quarter of an hour before; only that Stephen had 
had the look he longed for, without yet perceiving in himself 
the symptoms of returning reasonableness, and Maggie had 
darting thoughts across the dimness, — how came he to be 
there? Why had she come out? Not a word was spoken. 
If it had been, each would have been less intensely conscious 
of the other. 

“ Take care of this step,” said Stephen at last. 

“ Oh, I will go in now,” said Maggie, feeling that the step 
had come like a rescue. “ Good-evening.” 

In an instant she had withdrawn her arm, and was run¬ 
ning back to the house. She did not reflect that this sudden 
action would only add to the embarrassing recollections of 
the last half-hour. She had no thought left for that. She 
only threw herself into the low armchair, and burst into 
tears. 

“ Oh, Philip, Philip, I wish we were together again — so 
quietly — in the Red Deeps.” 

Stephen looked after her a moment, then went on to the 
boat, and was soon landed at the wharf. He spent the eve¬ 
ning in the billiard-room, smoking one cigar after another, 
and losing “ lives ” at pool. But he would not leave off. 
He was determined not to think, — not to admit any more 
distinct remembrance than was urged upon him by the per¬ 
petual presence of Maggie. He was looking at her, and she 
was on his arm. 

But there came the necessity of walking home in the cool 
starlight, and with it the necessity of cursing his own folly, 


446 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


and bitterly determining that he would never trust himself 
alone with Maggie again. It was all madness; he was in 
love, thoroughly attached to Lucy, and engaged, — engaged 
as strongly as an honorable man need be. He wished he 
had never seen this Maggie Tulliver, to be thrown into a 
fever by her in this way; she would make a sweet, strange, 
troublesome, adorable wife to some man or other, but he 
would never have chosen her himself. Did she feel as he 
did? He hoped she did — not. He ought not to have gone. 
He would master himself in future. He would make himself 
disagreeable to her, quarrel with her perhaps. Quarrel with 
her? Was it possible to quarrel with a creature who had 
such eyes, — defying and deprecating, contradicting and 
clinging, imperious and beseeching, — full of delicious op¬ 
posites? To see such a creature subdued by love for one 
would be a lot worth having — to another man. 

There was a muttered exclamation which ended this in¬ 
ward soliloquy, as Stephen threw away the end of his last 
cigar, and, thrusting his hands into his pockets, stalked along 
at a quieter pace through the shrubbery. It was not of a 
benedictory kind. 



CHAPTER VII 

PHILIP RE-ENTERS 

T HE next morning was very wet, — the sort of morning 
on which male neighbors who have no imperative occu¬ 
pation at home are likely to pay their fair friends an illimit¬ 
able visit. The rain, which has been endurable enough for 
the walk or ride one way, is sure to become so heavy, and 
at the same time so certain to clear up by and by, that noth¬ 
ing but an open quarrel can abbreviate the visit; latent de¬ 
testation will not do at all. And if people happen to be 
lovers, what can be so delightful, in England, as a rainy 
morning? English sunshine is dubious; bonnets are never 
quite secure; and if you sit down on the grass, it may lead 
to catarrhs. But the rain is to be depended on. You gallop 
through it in a mackintosh, and presently find yourself in 
the seat you like best, — a little above or a little below the 
one on which your goddess sits (it is the same thing to the 
metaphysical mind, and that is the reason why women are 
at once worshipped and looked down upon), with a satis¬ 
factory confidence that there will be no lady-callers. 

447 




448 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


“ Stephen will come earlier this morning, I know,” said 
Lucy; “ he always does when it’s rainy.” 

Maggie made no answer. She was angry with Stephen; 
she began to think she should dislike him; and if it had not 
been for the rain, she would have gone to her aunt Glegg’s 
this morning, and so have avoided him altogether. As it 
was, she must find some reason for remaining out of the 
room with her mother. 

But Stephen did not come earlier, and there was another 
visitor — a nearer neighbor — who preceded him. When 
Philip entered the room, he was going merely to bow to 
Maggie, feeling that their acquaintance was a secret which 
he was bound not to betray; but when she advanced toward 
him and put out her hand, he guessed at once that Lucy had 
been taken into her confidence. It was a moment of some 
agitation to both, though Philip had spent many hours in 
preparing for it; but like all persons who have passed 
through life with little expectation of sympathy, he seldom 
lost his self-control, and shrank with the most sensitive pride 
from any noticeable betrayal of emotion. A little extra 
paleness, a little tension of the nostril when he spoke, and 
the voice pitched in rather a higher key, that to strangers 
would seem expressive of cold indifference, were all the signs 
Philip usually gave of an inward drama that was not with¬ 
out its fierceness. But Maggie, who had little more power 
of concealing the impressions made upon her than if she had 
been constructed of musical strings, felt her eyes getting 
larger with tears as they took each other’s hands in silence. 
They were not painful tears; they had rather something of 
the same origin as the tears women and children shed when 
they have found some protection to cling to and look back 
on the threatened danger. 

For Philip, who a little while ago was associated con¬ 
tinually in Maggie’s mind with the sense that Tom might 
reproach her with some justice, had now, in this short 
space, become a sort of outward conscience to her, that 
she might fly to for rescue and strength. Her tranquil, 
tender affection for Philip, with its root deep down in her 


THE GREAT TEMPTATION 


449 


childhood, and its memories of long quiet talks confirming 
by distinct successive impressions the first instinctive bias, 
— the fact that in him the appeal was more strongly to 
her pity and womanly devotedness than to her vanity or 
other egoistic excitability of her nature, — seemed now to 
make a sort of sacred place, a sanctuary where she could 
find refuge from an alluring influence which the best part 
of herself must resist; which must bring horrible tumult 
within, wretchedness without. This new sense of her rela¬ 
tion to Philip nullified the anxious scruples she would other¬ 
wise have felt, lest she should overstep the limit of inter¬ 
course with him that Tom would sanction; and she put out 
her hand to him, and felt the tears in her eyes without any 
consciousness of an inward check. The scene was just what 
Lucy expected, and her kind heart delighted in bringing 
Philip and Maggie together again; though, even with all 
her regard for Philip, she could not resist the impression that 
her cousin Tom had some excuse for feeling shocked at the 
physical incongruity between the two, — a prosaic person 
like cousin Tom, who didn’t like poetry and fairy tales. But 
she began to speak as soon as possible, to set them at ease. 

“ This was very good and virtuous of you,” she said, in 
her pretty treble, like the low conversational notes of little 
birds, “ to come so soon after your arrival. And as it is, 
I think I will pardon you for running away in an inoppor¬ 
tune manner, and giving your friends no notice. Come 
and sit down here,”' she went on, placing the chair that 
would suit him best, “ and you shall find yourself treated 
mercifully.” 

“You will never govern well, Miss Deane,” said Philip, 
as he seated himself, “ because no one will ever believe in 
your severity. People will always encourage themselves in 
misdemeanors by the certainty that you will be indulgent.” 

Lucy gave some playful contradiction, but Philip did not 
hear what it was, for he had naturally turned toward 
Maggie, and she was looking at him with that open, affec¬ 
tionate scrutiny which we give to a friend from whom we 
have been long separated. What a moment their parting 


450 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


had been! And Philip felt as if he were only in the morrow 
of it. He felt this so keenly, — with such intense, detailed 
remembrance, with such passionate revival of all that had 
been said and looked in their last conversation, — that with 
that jealousy and distrust which in diffident natures is al¬ 
most inevitably linked with a strong feeling, he thought he 
read in Maggie’s glance and manner the evidence of a 
change. The very fact that he feared and half expected it 
would be sure to make this thought rush in, in the absence 
of positive proof to the contrary. 

“ I am having a great holiday, am I not ? ” said Maggie. 
“ Lucy is like a fairy godmother; she has turned me from a 
drudge into a princess in no time. I do nothing but indulge 
myself all day long, and she always finds out what I want 
before I know it myself.” 

“ I am sure she is the happier for having you, then,” said 
Philip. “ You must be better than a whole menagerie of pets 
to her. And you look well. You are benefiting by the 
change.” 

Artificial conversation of this sort went on a little while, 
till Lucy, determined to put an end to it, exclaimed, with a 
good imitation of annoyance, that she had forgotten some¬ 
thing, and was quickly out of the room. 

In a moment Maggie and Philip leaned forward, and the 
hands were clasped again, with a look of sad contentment, 
like that of friends who meet in the memory of recent 
sorrow. 

“ I told my brother I wished to see you, Philip; I asked 
him to release me from my promise, and he consented.” 

Maggie, in her impulsiveness, wanted Philip to know at 
once the position they must hold toward each other; but she 
checked herself. The things that had happened since he had 
spoken of his love for her were so painful that she shrank 
from being the first to allude to them. It seemed almost 
like an injury toward Philip even to mention her brother, — 
her brother, who had insulted him. But he was thinking 
too entirely of her to be sensitive on any other point at that 
moment. 


THE GREAT TEMPTATION 451 

“ Then we can at least be friends, Maggie ? There is 
nothing to hinder that now? ” 

“ Will not your father object? ” said Maggie, withdrawing 
her hand. 

“ I should not give you up on any ground but your own 
wish, Maggie,” said Philip, coloring. “ There are points on 
which I should always resist my father, as I used to tell you. 
That is one.” 

“ Then there is nothing to hinder our being friends, 
Philip, — seeing each other and talking to each other while 
I am here; I shall soon go away again. I mean to go very 
soon, to a new situation.” 

“ Is that inevitable, Maggie? ” 

“ Yes; I must not stay here long. It would unfit me for 
the life I must begin again at last. I can’t live in depend¬ 
ence, — I can’t live with my brother, though he is very good 
to me. He would like to provide for me; but that would 
be intolerable to me.” 

Philip was silent a few moments, and then said, in that 
high, feeble voice which with him indicated the resolute sup¬ 
pression of emotion, — 

“ Is there no other alternative, Maggie ? Is that life, 
away from those who love you, the only one you will allow 
yourself to look forward to ? ” 

“ Yes, Philip,” she said, looking at him pleadingly, as if 
she entreated him to believe that she was compelled to this 
course. “ At least, as things are; I don’t know what may 
be in years to come. But I begin to think there can never 
come much happiness to me from loving; I have always had 
so much pain mingled with it. I wish I could make myself 
a world outside it, as men do.” 

“ Now you are returning to your old thought in a new 
form, Maggie, — the thought I used to combat,” said 
Philip, with a slight tinge of bitterness. “ You want to find 
out a mode of renunciation that will be an escape from 
pain. I tell you again, there is no such escape possible ex¬ 
cept by perverting or mutilating one’s nature. What would 
become of me, if I tried to escape from pain? Scorn 



452 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


and cynicism would be my only opium; unless I could 
fall into some kind of conceited madness, and fancy myself 
a favorite of Heaven because I am not a favorite with 
men.” 

The bitterness had taken on some impetuosity as Philip 
went on speaking; the words were evidently an outlet for 
some immediate feeling of his own, as well as an answer to 
Maggie. There was a pain pressing on him at that moment. 
He shrank with proud delicacy from the faintest allusion to 
the words of love, of plighted love that had passed between 
them. It would have seemed to him like reminding Maggie 
of a promise; it would have had for him something of the 
baseness of compulsion. He could not dwell on the fact 
that he himself had not changed; for that too would have 
had the air of an appeal. His love for Maggie was stamped, 
even more than the rest of his experience, with the exag¬ 
gerated sense that he was an exception, — that she, that 
every one, saw him in the light of an exception. 

But Maggie was conscience-stricken. 

“ Yes, Philip,” she said, with her childish contrition when 
he used to chide her, “ you are right, I know. I do always 
think too much of my own feelings, and not enough of 
others’, — not enough of yours. I had need have you al¬ 
ways to find fault with me and teach me; so many things 
have come true that you used to tell me.” 

Maggie was resting her elbow on the table, leaning her 
head on her hand and looking at Philip with half-penitent 
dependent affection, as she said this; while he was return¬ 
ing her gaze with an expression that, to her consciousness, 
gradually became less vague, — became charged with a 
specific recollection. Had his mind flown back to some¬ 
thing that she now remembered, — something about a lover 
of Lucy’s? It was a thought that made her shudder; it 
gave new definiteness to her present position, and to the 
tendency of what had happened the evening before. She 
moved her arm from the table, urged to change her posi¬ 
tion by that positive physical oppression at the heart that 
sometimes accompanies a sudden mental pang. 


THE GREAT TEMPTATION 


453 


“ What is the matter, Maggie ? Has something hap¬ 
pened? ” Philip said, in inexpressible anxiety, his imagina¬ 
tion being only too ready to weave everything that was 
fatal to them both. 

“ No, nothing,” said Maggie, rousing her latent will. 
Philip must not have that odious thought in his mind; she 
would banish it from her own. “ Nothing,” she repeated, 
“ except in my own mind. You used to say I should feel 
the effect of my starved life, as you called it; and I do. I 
am too eager in my enjoyment of music and all luxuries, 
now they are come to me.” 

She took up her work and occupied herself resolutely, 
while Philip watched her, really in doubt whether she had 
anything more than this general allusion in her mind. It 
was quite in Maggie’s character to be agitated by vague self- 
reproach. But soon there came a violent well-known ring 
at the door-bell resounding through the house. 

“ Oh, what a startling announcement! ” said Maggie, 
quite mistress of herself, though not without some inward 
flutter. “ I wonder where Lucy is.” 

Lucy had not been deaf to the signal, and after an inter¬ 
val long enough for a few solicitous but not hurried in¬ 
quiries, she herself ushered Stephen in. 

“ Well, old fellow,” he said, going straight up to Philip 
and shaking him heartily by the hand, bowing to Maggie 
in passing, “it’s glorious to have you back again; only I 
wish you’d conduct yourself a little less like a sparrow with 
a residence on the house-top, and not go in and out con¬ 
stantly without letting the servants know. This is about 
the twentieth time I’ve had to scamper up those countless 
stairs to that painting-room of yours, all to no purpose, be¬ 
cause your people thought you were at home. Such inci¬ 
dents embitter friendship.” 

“ I’ve so few visitors, it seems hardly worth while to 
leave notice of my exit and entrances,” said Philip, feeling 
rather oppressed just then by Stephen’s bright strong pres¬ 
ence and strong voice. 

“ Are you quite well this morning, Miss Tulliver ? ” said 


454 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


Stephen, turning to Maggie with stiff politeness, and putting 
out his hand with the air of fulfilling a social duty. 

Maggie gave the tips of her fingers, and said, “ Quite well, 
thank you,” in a tone of proud indifference. Philip’s eyes 
were watching them keenly; but Lucy was used to seeing 
variations in their manner to each other, and only thought 
with regret that there was some natural antipathy which 
every now and then surmounted their mutual good-will. 
“ Maggie is not the sort of woman Stephen admires, and 
she is irritated by something in him which she interprets as 
conceit,” was the silent observation that accounted for 
everything to guileless Lucy. Stephen and Maggie had no 
sooner completed this studied greeting than each felt hurt 
by the other’s coldness. And Stephen, while rattling on in 
questions to Philip about his recent sketching expedition, 
was thinking all the more about Maggie because he was not 
drawing her into the conversation as he had invariably done 
before. “ Maggie and Philip are not looking happy,” 
thought Lucy; “ this first interview has been saddening to 
them.” 

“ I think we people who have not been galloping,” she 
said to Stephen, “ are all a little damped by the rain. Let 
us have some music. We ought to take advantage of hav¬ 
ing Philip and you together. Give us the duet in Masaniello; 
Maggie has not heard that, and I know it will suit her.” 

“ Come, then,” said Stephen, going toward the piano, and 
giving a foretaste of the tune in his deep “ brum-brum,” 
very pleasant to hear. 

“ You, please, Philip, — you play the accompaniment,” 
said Lucy, “ and then I can go on with my work. You will 
like to play, sha’n’t you? ” she added, with a pretty, inquir¬ 
ing look, anxious, as usual, lest she should have proposed 
what was not pleasant to another; but with yearnings to¬ 
ward her unfinished embroidery. 

Philip had brightened at the proposition, for there is no 
feeling, perhaps, except the extremes of fear and grief, that 
does not find relief in music, — that does not make a man 
sing or play the better; and Philip had an abundance of 


THE GREAT TEMPTATION 


455 


pent-up feeling at this moment, as complex as any trio or 
quartet that was ever meant to express love and jealousy 
and resignation and fierce suspicion, all at the same time. 

“ Oh, yes,” he said, seating himself at the piano, “ it is a 
way of eking out one’s imperfect life and being three people 
at once, — to sing and make the piano sing, and hear them 
both all the while, or else to sing and paint.” 

“ Ah, there you are an enviable fellow. I can do nothing 
with my hands,” said Stephen. “ That has generally been 
observed in men of great administrative capacity, I believe, 
— a tendency to predominance of the reflective powers in 
me! Haven’t you observed that, Miss Tulliver ? ” 

Stephen had fallen by mistake into his habit of playful 
appeal to Maggie, and she could not repress the answering 
flush and epigram. 

“ I have observed a tendency to predominance,” she said, 
smiling; and Philip at that moment devoutly hoped that she 
found the tendency disagreeable. 

“ Come, come,” said Lucy; “ music, music! We will dis¬ 
cuss each other’s qualities another time.” 

Maggie always tried in vain to go on with her work when 
music began. She tried harder than ever to-day; for the 
thought that Stephen knew how much she cared for his 
singing was one that no longer roused a merely playful 
resistance; and she knew, too, that it was his habit always 
to stand so that he could look at her. But it was of no use; 
she soon threw her work down, and all her intentions were 
lost in the vague state of emotion produced by the inspir¬ 
ing duet, — emotion that seemed to make her at once strong 
and weak; strong for all enjoyment, weak for all resistance. 
When the strain passed into the minor, she half started 
from her seat with the sudden thrill of that change. Poor 
Maggie! She looked very beautiful when her soul was 
being played on in this way by the inexorable power of 
sound. You might have seen the slightest perceptible 
quivering through her whole frame as she leaned a little 
forward, clasping her hands as if to steady herself; while 
her eyes dilated and brightened into that wide-open, childish 



456 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


expression of wondering delight which always came back 
in her happiest moments. Lucy, who at other times had 
always been at the piano when Maggie was looking in this 
way, could not resist the impulse to steal up to her and kiss 
her. Philip, too, caught a glimpse of her now and then 
round the open book on the desk, and felt that he had never 
before seen her under so strong an influence. 

“ More, more! ” said Lucy, when the duet had been en¬ 
cored. “Something spirited again. Maggie always says 
she likes a great rush of sound.” 

“ It must be * Let us take the road/ then,” said Stephen, 
— “ so suitable for a wet morning. But are you prepared 
to abandon the most sacred duties of life, and. come and 
sing with us ? ” 

“ Oh, yes,” said Lucy, laughing. “ If you will look out 
the Beggar’s Opera from the large canterbury. It has a 
dingy cover.” 

“ That is a great clew, considering there are about a score 
covers here of rival dinginess,” said Stephen, drawing out 
the canterbury. 

“ Oh, play something the while, Philip,” said Lucy, notic¬ 
ing that his fingers were wandering over the keys. “ What 
is that you are falling into ? — something delicious that I 
don’t know.” 

“Don’t you know that?” said Philip, bringing out the 
tune more definitely. “It’s from the Sonnambuia — ‘Ah! 
perche non posso odiarti.’ I don’t know the opera, but it 
appears the tenor is telling the heroine that he shall always 
love her though she may forsake him. You’ve heard me 
sing it to the English words, ‘ I love thee still.’ ” 

It was not quite unintentionally that Philip had wandered 
into this song, which might be an indirect expression to 
Maggie of what he could not prevail on himself to say to 
her directly. Her ears had been open to what he was saying, 
and when he began to sing, she understood the plaintive 
passion of the music. That pleading tenor had no very, fine 
qualities as a voice, but it was not quite new to her; it had 
sung to her by snatches, in a subdued way, among the 


THE GREAT TEMPTATION 


457 


grassy walks and hollows, and underneath the leaning ash- 
tree in the Red Deeps. There seemed to be some reproach 
in the words; did Philip mean that? She wished she had 
assured him more distinctly in their conversation that she 
desired not to renew the hope of love between them, only 
because it clashed with her inevitable circumstances. She 
was touched, not thrilled by the song; it suggested distinct 
memories and thoughts, and brought quiet regret in the 
place of excitement. 

“ That’s the way with you tenors,” said Stephen, who 
was waiting with music in his hand while Philip finished 
the song. “ You demoralize the fair sex by warbling your 
sentimental love and constancy under all sorts of vile treat¬ 
ment. Nothing short of having your heads served up in a 
dish like that mediaeval tenor or troubadour, would prevent 
you from expressing your entire resignation. I must ad¬ 
minister an antidote, while Miss Deane prepares to tear 
herself away from her bobbins.” 

Stephen rolled out, with saucy energy,— 

“ Shall I, wasting in despair, 

Die because a woman’s fair? ” 

and seemed to make all the air in the room alive with a new 
influence. Lucy, always proud of what Stephen did, went 
toward the piano with laughing, admiring looks at him; and 
Maggie, in spite of her resistance to the spirit of the song 
and to the singer, was taken hold of and shaken by the 
invisible influence, — was borne along by a wave too strong 
for her. 

But, angrily resolved not to betray herself, she seized her 
work, and went on making false stitches and pricking her 
fingers with much perseverance, not looking up or taking 
notice of what was going forward, until all the three voices 
united in “ Let us take the road.” 

I am afraid there would have been a subtle, stealing grati¬ 
fication in her mind if she had known how entirely this 
saucy, defiant Stephen was occupied with her; how he was 
passing rapidly from a determination to treat her with 


458 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


ostentatious indifference to an irritating desire for some 
sign of inclination from her, — some interchange of sub¬ 
dued word or look with her. It was not long before he 
found an opportunity, when they had passed to the music 
of The Tempest. Maggie, feeling the need of a footstool, 
was walking across the room to get one, when Stephen, who 
was not singing just then, and was conscious of all her 
movements, guessed her want, and flew to anticipate her, 
lifting the footstool with an entreating look at her, which 
made it impossible not to return a glance of gratitude. And 
then, to have the footstool placed carefully by a too self- 
confident personage, — not any self-confident personage, but 
one in particular, who suddenly looks humble and anxious, 
and lingers, bending still, to ask if there is not some draught 
in that position between the window and the fireplace, and 
if he may not be allowed to move the work-table for her, — 
these things will summon a little of the too ready, traitorous 
tenderness into a woman’s eyes, compelled as she is in her 
girlish time to learn her life-lessons in very trivial language. 
And to Maggie such things had not been every-day inci¬ 
dents, but were a new element in her life, and found her 
keen appetite for homage quite fresh. That tone of gentle 
solicitude obliged her to look at the face that was bent 
toward her, and to say, “ No, thank you”; and nothing 
could prevent that mutual glance from being delicious to 
both, as it had been the evening before. 

It was but an ordinary act of politeness in Stephen; it 
had hardly taken two minutes; and Lucy, who was singing, 
scarcely noticed it. But to Philip’s mind, filled already with 
a vague anxiety that was likely to find a definite ground for 
itself in any trivial incident, this sudden eagerness in Ste¬ 
phen, and the change in Maggie’s face, which was plainly 
reflecting a beam from his, seemed so strong a contrast 
with the previous overwrought signs of indifference, as to be 
charged with painful meaning. Stephen’s voice, pouring in 
again, jarred upon his nervous susceptibility as if it had been 
the clang of sheet-iron, and he felt inclined to make the 
piano shriek in utter discord. He had really seen no com- 


THE GREAT TEMPTATION 


459 


municable ground for suspecting any unusual feeling be¬ 
tween Stephen and Maggie; his own reason told him so, 
and he wanted to go home at once that he might reflect 
coolly on these false images, till he had convinced himself of 
their nullity. But then, again, he wanted to stay as long as 
Stephen stayed, — always to be present when Stephen was 
present with Maggie. It seemed to poor Philip so natural, 
nay, inevitable, that any man who was near Maggie should 
fall in love with her! There was no promise of happiness 
for her if she were beguiled into loving Stephen Guest; and 
this thought emboldened Philip to view his own love for her 
in the light of a less unequal offering. He was beginning to 
play very falsely under this deafening inward tumult, and 
Lucy was looking at him in astonishment, when Mrs. Tulli- 
ver’s entrance to summon them to lunch came as an excuse 
for abruptly breaking off the music. 

“Ah, Mr. Philip! ” said Mr. Deane, when they entered 
the dining-room, “ I’ve not seen you for a long while. Your 
father’s not at home, I think, is he? I went after him to 
the office the other day, and they said he was out of town.” 

“ He’s been to Mudport on business for several days,” 
said Philip; “ but he’s come back now.” 

“ As fond of his farming hobby as ever, eh? ” 

“ I believe so,” said Philip, rather wondering at this sud¬ 
den interest in his father’s pursuits. 

“Ah! ” said Mr. Deane, “he’s got some land in his own 
hands on this side the jiver as well as the other, I think? ” 

“ Yes, he has.” 

“ Ah! ” continued Mr. Deane, as he dispensed the pigeon- 
pie, “ he must find farming a heavy item, — an expensive 
hobby. I never had a hobby myself, never would give in 
to that. And the worst of all hobbies are those that people 
think they can get money at. They shoot their money down 
like corn out of a sack then.” 

Lucy felt a little nervous under her father’s apparently 
gratuitous criticism of Mr. Wakem’s expenditure. But it 
ceased there, and Mr. Deane became unusually silent and 
meditative during his luncheon. Lucy, accustomed to 


460 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


watch all indications in her father, and having reasons, 
which had recently become strong, for an extra interest in 
what referred to the Wakems, felt an unusual curiosity to 
know what had prompted her father’s questions. His subse¬ 
quent silence made her suspect there had been some special 
reason for them in his mind. 

With this idea in her head, she resorted to her usual plan 
when she wanted to tell or ask her father anything particu¬ 
lar: she found a reason for her aunt Tuiliver’s leaving the 
dining-room after dinner, and seated herself on a small stool 
at her father’s knee. Mr. Deane, under those circumstances, 
considered that he tasted some of the most agreeable mo¬ 
ments his merits had purchased him in life, notwithstanding 
that Lucy, disliking to have her hair powdered with snuff, 
usually began by mastering his snuff-box on such occasions. 

“ You don’t want to go to sleep yet, papa, do you? ” she 
said, as she brought up her stool and opened the large 
fingers that clutched the snuff-box. 

“ Not yet,” said Mr. Deane, glancing at the reward of 
merit in the decanter. “ But what do you want? ” he added, 
pinching the dimpled chin fondly, — “ to coax some more 
sovereigns out of my pocket for your bazaar ? Eh ? ” 

“ No, I have no base motives at all to-day. I only want 
to talk, not to beg. I want to know what made you ask 
Philip Wakem about his father’s farming to-day, papa? It 
seemed rather odd, because you never hardly say anything 
to him about his father; and why should you care about 
Mr. Wakem’s losing money by his hobby? ” 

“ Something to do with business,” said Mr. Deane, wav¬ 
ing his hands, as if to repel intrusion into that mystery. 

“ But, papa, you always say Mr. Wakem has brought 
Philip up like a girl; how came you to think you should get 
any business knowledge out of him? Those abrupt ques¬ 
tions sounded rather oddly. Philip thought them queer.” 

“ Nonsense, child! ” said Mr. Deane, willing to justify his 
social demeanor, with which he had taken some pains in his 
upward progress. “ There’s a report that Wakem’s mill and 
farm on the other side of the river — Dorlcote Mill, your 


THE GREAT TEMPTATION 


461 


uncle Tulliver’s, you know — isn’t answering so well as it 
did. I wanted to see if your friend Philip would let any¬ 
thing out about his father’s being tired of farming.” 

“ Why? Would you buy the mill, papa, if he would part 
with it? ” said Lucy, eagerly. “ Oh, tell me everything; 
here, you shall have your snuff-box if you’ll tell me. Be¬ 
cause Maggie says all their hearts are set on Tom’s getting 
back the mill some time. It was one of the last things her 
father said to Tom, that he must get back the mill.” 

“ Hush, you little puss,” said Mr. Deane, availing him¬ 
self of the restored snuff-box. “ You must not say a word 
about this thing; do you hear? There’s very little chance 
of their getting the mill, or of anybody’s getting it out of 
Wakem’s hands. And if he knew that we wanted it with a 
view to the Tullivers’ getting it again, he’d be the less likely 
to part with it. It’s natural, after what happened. He be¬ 
haved well enough to Tulliver before; but a horsewhipping 
is not likely to be paid for with sugar-plums.” 

“ Now, papa,” said Lucy, with a little air of solemnity, 
“ will you trust me? You must not ask me all my reasons 
for what I’m going to say, but I have very strong reasons. 
And I’m very cautious; I am, indeed.” 

“ Well, let us hear.” 

“ Why, I believe, if you will let me take Philip Wakem 
into our confidence, — let me tell him all about your wish 
to buy, and what it’s for; that my cousins wish to have 
it, and why they wish to have it, — I believe Philip 
would help to bring it about. I know he would desire to 
do it.” 

“ I don’t see how that can be, child,” said Mr. Deane, 
looking puzzled. “Why should he care?” — then, with a 
sudden penetrating look at his daughter, “ You don’t think 
the poor lad’s fond of you, and so you can make him do 
what you like?” (Mr. Deane felt quite safe about his 
daughter’s affections.) 

“ No, papa; he cares very little about me, — not so much 
as I care about him. But I have a reason for being quite 
sure of what I say. Don’t you ask me. And if you ever 


462 MILL ON THE FLOSS 

guess, don’t tell me. Only give me leave to do as I think 
fit about it.” 

Lucy rose from her stool to seat herself on her father’s 
knee, and kissed him with that last request. 

“ Are you sure you won’t do mischief, now ? ” he said, 
looking at her with delight. 

“Yes, papa, quite sure. I’m very wise; I’ve got all your 
business talents. Didn’t you admire my accompt-book, 
now, when I showed it you? ” 

“ Well, well, if this youngster will keep his counsel, there 
won’t be much harm done. And to tell the truth, I think 
there’s not much chance for us any other way. Now, let me 
go off to sleep.” 


CHAPTER VIII 

WAKEM IN A NEW LIGHT 

B EFORE three days had passed after the conversation 
you have just overheard between Lucy and her father, 
she had contrived to have a private interview with Philip 
during a visit of Maggie’s to her aunt Glegg. For a day and 
a night Philip turned over in his mind with restless agitation 
all that Lucy had told him in that interview, till he had 
thoroughly resolved on a course of action. He thought he 
saw before him now a possibility of altering his position 
with respect to Maggie, and removing at least one obstacle 
between them. He laid his plan and calculated all his 
moves with the fervid deliberation of a chess-player in the 
days of his first ardor, and was amazed himself at his sud¬ 
den genius as a tactician. His plan was as bold as it was 
thoroughly calculated. Having watched for a moment when 
his father had nothing more urgent on his hands than the 
newspaper, he went behind him, laid a hand on his shoulder, 
and said, — 

“ Father, will you come up into my sanctum, and look at 
my new sketches? I’ve arranged them now.” 


THE GREAT TEMPTATION 


463 


“ Fm getting terribly stiff in the joints, Phil, for climbing 
those stairs of yours,” said Wakem, looking kindly at his 
son as he laid down his paper. “ But come along, then.” 

“ This is a nice place for you, isn’t it, Phil ? — a capital 
light that from the roof, eh ? ” was, as usual, the first thing 
he said on entering the painting-room. He liked to remind 
himself and his son too that his fatherly indulgence had 
provided the accommodation. He had been a good father. 
Emily would have nothing to reproach him with there, if 
she came back again from her grave. 

“ Come, come,” he said, putting his double eye-glass over 
his nose, and seating himself to take a general view while 
he rested, “ you’ve got a famous show here. Upon my word, 
I don’t see that your things aren’t as good at that London 
artist’s — what’s his name — that Leyburn gave so much 
money for.” 

Philip shook his head and smiled. He had seated himself 
on his painting-stool, and had taken a lead pencil in his 
hand, with which he was making strong marks to counteract 
the sense of tremulousness. He watched his father get up, 
and walk .slowly round, good-naturedly dwelling on the pic¬ 
tures much longer than his amount of genuine taste for land¬ 
scape would have prompted, till he stopped before a stand 
on which two pictures were placed, — one much larger than 
the other, the smaller one in a leather case. 

“ Bless me! what have you Ijere? ” said Wakem, startled 
by a sudden transition from landscape to portrait. “ I 
thought you’d left off figures. Who are these? ” 

“ They are the same person,” said Philip, with calm 
promptness, “ at different ages.” 

“ And what person ? ” said Wakem,- sharply fixing his 
eyes with a growing look of suspicion on the larger picture. 

“ Miss Tulliver. The small one is something like what 
she was when I was at school with her brother at King’s 
Lorton; the larger one is not quite so good a likeness of 
what she was when I came from abroad.” 

Wakem turned round fiercely, with a flushed face, letting 
his eye-glass fall, and looking at his son with a savage ex- 


464 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


pression for a moment, as if he was ready to strike that 
daring feebleness from the stool. But he threw himself into 
the arm-chair again, and thrust his hands into his trouser- 
pockets, still looking angrily at his son, however. Philip did 
not return the look, but sat quietly watching the point of 
his pencil. 

“ And do you mean to say, then, that you have had any 
acquaintance with her since you came from abroad? ” said 
Wakem, at last, with that vain effort which rage always 
makes to throw as much punishment as it desires to inflict 
into words and tones, since blows are forbidden. 

“ Yes; I saw a great deal of her for a whole year before 
her father’s death. We met often in that thicket — the 
Red Deeps — near Dorlcote Mill. I love her dearly; I shall 
never love any other woman. I have thought of her ever 
since she was a little girl.” 

“ Go on, sir! And you have corresponded with her all 
this while ? ” 

“ No. I never told her I loved her till just before we 
parted, and she promised her brother not to see me again 
or to correspond with me. I am not sure that she loves me 
or would consent to marry me. But if she would consent, 
— if she did love me well enough, — I should marry her.” 

“ And this is the return you make me for all the indul¬ 
gences I’ve heaped on you? ” said Wakem, getting white, 
and beginning to tremble under an enraged sense of im¬ 
potence before Philip’s calm defiance and concentration of 
purpose. 

“ No, father,” said Philip, looking up at him for the first 
time; “ I don’t regard it as a return. You have been an in¬ 
dulgent father to me; but I have always felt that it was 
because you had an affectionate wish to give me as much 
happiness as my unfortunate lot would admit of, not that 
it was a debt you expected me to pay by sacrificing all my 
chances of happiness to satisfy feelings of yours which I 
can never share.” 

“ I think most sons would share their father’s feelings in 
this case,” said Wakem, bitterly. “ The girl’s father was 


THE GREAT TEMPTATION 


465 


an ignorant mad brute, who was within an inch of murder¬ 
ing me. The whole town knows it. And the brother is just 
as insolent, only in a cooler way. He forbade her seeing 
you, you say; he’ll break every bone in your body, for your 
greater happiness, if you don’t take care. But you seem to 
have made up your mind; you have counted the conse¬ 
quences, I suppose. Of course you are independent of me; 
you can marry this girl to-morrow, if you like; you are a 
man of five-and-twenty, — you can go your way, and I can 
go mine. We need have no more to do with each other.” 

Wakem rose and walked toward the door, but something 
held him back, and instead of leaving the room, he walked 
up and down it. Philip was slow to reply, and when he 
spoke, his tone had a more incisive quietness and clearness 
than ever. 

“ No; I can’t marry Miss Tulliver, even if she would have 
me, if I have only my own resources to maintain her with. 
I have been brought up to no profession. I can’t offer her 
poverty as well as deformity.” 

“ Ah, there is a reason for your clinging to me, doubtless,” 
said Wakem, still bitterly, though Philip’s last words had 
given him a pang; they had stirred a feeling which had been 
a habit for a quarter of a century. He threw himself into 
the chair again. 

“ I expected all this,” said Philip. “ I know these scenes 
are often happening between father and son. If I were 
like other men of my age, I might answer your angry 
words by still angrier; we might part; I should marry the 
woman I love, and have a chance of being as happy as 
the rest. But if it will be a satisfaction to you to annihilate 
the very object of everything you’ve done for me, you 
have an advantage over most fathers; you can completely 
deprive me of the only thing that would make my life worth 
having.” 

Philip paused, but his father was silent. 

“ You know best what satisfaction you would have, be¬ 
yond that of gratifying a ridiculous rancor worthy only of 
wandering savages.” 


466 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


“ Ridiculous rancor! ” Wakem burst out. “ What do you 
mean? Damn it! is a man to be horsewhipped by a boor 
and love him for it? Besides, there’s that cold, proud devil 
of :a son, who said a word to me I shall not forget when we 
had the settling. He would be as pleasant a mark for a 
bullet as I know, if he were worth the expense.” 

“ I don’t mean your resentment toward them,” said 
Philip, w r ho had his reasons for some sympathy with this 
view of Tom, “ though a feeling of revenge is not worth 
much, that you should care to keep it. I mean your ex¬ 
tending the enmity to a helpless girl, who has too much 
sense and goodness to share their narrow prejudices. She 
has never entered into the family quarrels.” 

“ What does that signify? We don’t ask what a woman 
does; we ask whom she belongs to. It’s altogether a de¬ 
grading thing to you, to think of marrying old Tulliver’s 
daughter.” 

For the first time in the dialogue, Philip lost some of his 
self-control, and colored with anger. 

“ Miss Tulliver,” he said, with bitter incisiveness, “ has 
the only grounds of rank that anything but vulgar folly can 
suppose to belong to the middle class; she is thoroughly re¬ 
fined, and her friends, whatever else they may be, are re¬ 
spected for irreproachable honor and integrity. All St. 
Ogg’s, I fancy, would pronounce her to be more than my 
equal.” 

Wakem darted a glance of fierce question at his son; but 
Philip was not looking at him, and with a certain penitent 
consciousness went on, in a few moments, as if in amplifica¬ 
tion of his last words,— 

“ Find a single person in St. Ogg’s who will not tell you 
that a beautiful creature like her would be throwing herself 
away on a pitiable object like me.” 

“Not she! ” said Wakem, rising again, and forgetting 
everything else in a burst of resentful pride, half fatherly, 
half personal. “ It would be a deuced fine match for her. 
It’s all stuff about an accidental deformity, when a girl’s 
really attached to a man.” 


THE GREAT TEMPTATION 467 

“ But girls are not apt to get attached under those cir¬ 
cumstances,” said Philip. 

“ Well, then,” said Wakem, rather brutally, trying to re¬ 
cover his previous position, “ if she doesn’t care for you, you 
might have spared yourself the trouble of talking to me 
about her, and you might have spared me the trouble of 
refusing my consent to what was never likely to happen.” 

Wakem strode to the door, and without looking round 
again, banged it after him. 

Philip was not without confidence that his father would 
be ultimately wrought upon as he had expected, by what 
had passed; but the scene had jarred upon his nerves, which 
were as sensitive as a woman’s. He determined not to go 
down to dinner; he couldn’t meet his father again that day. 
It was Wakem’s habit, when he had no company at home, 
to go out in the evening, often as early as half-past seven; 
and as it was far on in the afternoon now, Philip locked up his 
room and went out for a long ramble, thinking he would not 
return until his father was out of the house again. He got 
into a boat, and went down 4he river to a favorite village, 
where he dined, and lingered till it was late enough for him 
to return. He had never had any sort of quarrel with his 
father before, and had a sickening fear that this contest, 
just begun, might go on for weeks; and what might not 
happen in that time? He would not allow himself to de¬ 
fine what that involuntary question meant. But if he could 
once be in the position of Maggie’s accepted, acknowledged 
lover, there would be less room for vague dread. He went 
up to his painting-room again, and threw himself with a 
sense of fatigue into the arm-chair, looking round absently 
at the views of water and rock that were ranged around, 
till he fell into a doze, in which he fancied Maggie was 
slipping down a glistening, green, slimy channel of a water¬ 
fall, and he was looking on helpless, till he was awakened 
by what seemed a sudden, awful crash. 

It was the opening of the door, and he could hardly have 
dozed more than a few moments, for there was no per¬ 
ceptible change in the evening light. It was his father 


468 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


who entered; and when Philip moved to vacate the chair 
for him, he said,— 

“ Sit still. I’d rather walk about.” 

He stalked up and down the room once or twice, and then, 
standing opposite Philip with his hands thrust in his side 
pockets, he said, as if continuing a conversation that had 
not been broken off, — 

“ But this girl seems to have been fond of you, Phil, else 
she wouldn’t have met you in that way.” 

Philip’s heart was beating rapidly, and a transient flush 
passed over his face like a gleam. It was not quite easy 
to speak at once. 

“ She liked me at King’s Lorton, when she was a little 
girl, because I used to sit with her brother a great deal when 
he had hurt his foot. She had kept that in her memory, and 
thought of me as a friend of a long while ago. She didn’t 
think of me as a lover when she met me.” 

“ Well, but you made love to her at last. What did she 
say then? ” said Wakem, walking about again. 

“ She said she did love me then.” 

“Confound it, then; what else do you want? Is she a 
jilt? ” 

“ She was very young then,” said Philip, hesitatingly. 
“ I’m afraid she hardly knew what she felt. I’m afraid our 
long separation, and-the idea that events must always di¬ 
vide us, may have made a difference.” 

“ But she’s in the town. I’ve seen her at church. Haven’t 
you spoken to her since you came back?” 

“ Yes, at Mr. Deane’s. But I couldn’t renew my pro¬ 
posals to her on several grounds. One obstacle would be 
removed if you would give your consent, — if you would 
be willing to think of her as a daughter-in-law.” 

Wakem was silent a little while, pausing before Maggie’s 
picture. 

“ She’s not the sort of woman your mother was, though, 
Phil,” he said, at last. “ I saw her at church, — she’s hand¬ 
somer than this, — deuced fine eyes and fine figure, I saw; 
but rather dangerous and unmanageable, eh ? ” 


THE GREAT TEMPTATION 469 

“ She’s very tender and affectionate, and so simple, — 
without the airs and petty contrivances other women have.” 

“Ah?” said Wakem. Then looking round at his son, 
“But your mother looked gentler; she had that brown 
wavy hair and gray eyes, like yours. You can’t remember 
her very well. It was a thousand pities I’d no likeness of 
her.” 

“ Then, shouldn’t you be glad for me to have the same 
sort of happiness, father, to sweeten my life for me? There 
can never be another tie so strong to you as that which 
began eight-and-twenty years ago, when you married my 
mother, and you have been tightening it ever since.” 

“ Ah, Phil, you’re the only fellow that knows the best 
of me,” said Wakem, giving his hand to his son. “ We 
must keep together if we can. And now, what am I to 
do? You must come downstairs*and tell me. Am I to go 
and call on this dark-eyed damsel? ” 

The barrier once thrown down in this way, Philip could 
talk freely to his father of their entire relation with the 
Tullivers, — of the desire to get the mill and land back 
into the family, and of its transfer to Guest & Co. as an 
intermediate step. He could venture now to be persuasive 
and urgent, and his father yielded with more readiness than 
he had calculated on. 

“/ don’t care about the mill,” he said at last, with a 
sort of angry compliance. “ I’ve had an infernal deal of 
bother lately about the mill. Let them pay me for my im¬ 
provements, that’s all. But there’s one thing you needn’t 
ask me. I shall have no direct transactions with young Tul- 
liver. If you like to swallow him for his sister’s sake, you 
may; but I’ve no sauce that will make him go down.” 

I leave you to imagine the agreeable feelings with which 
Philip went to Mr. Deane the next day, to say that Mr. 
Wakem was ready to open the negotiations, and Lucy’s 
pretty triumph as she appealed to her father whether she 
had not proved her great business abilities. Mr. Deane 
was rather puzzled, and suspected that there had been 
something “ going on ” among the young people to which 


470 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


he wanted a clew. But to men of Mr. Deane’s stamp, what 
goes on among the young people is as extraneous to the 
real business of life as what goes on among the birds and 
butterflies, until it can be shown to have a malign bearing 
on monetary affairs. And in this case the bearing appeared 
to be entirely propitious. 


CHAPTER IX 

CHARITY IN FULL-DRESS 

T HE culmination of Maggie’s career as an admired mem¬ 
ber of society in St. Ogg’s was certainly the day of the 
bazaar, when her simple ndble beauty, clad in a white muslin 
of some soft-floating kind, which I suspect must have come 
from the stores of aunt Pullet’s wardrobe, appeared with 
marked distinction among the more adorned and conven¬ 
tional women around her. We perhaps never detect how 
much of our social demeanor is made up of artificial airs 
until we see a person who is at once beautiful and simple; 
without the beauty, we are apt to call simplicity awkward¬ 
ness. The Miss Guests were much too well-bred to have 
any of the grimaces and affected tones that belong to pre¬ 
tentious vulgarity; but their stall being next to the one 
where Maggie sat, it seemed newly obvious to-day that Miss 
Guest held her chin too high, and that Miss Laura spoke 
and moved continually with a view to effect. 

All well-dressed St. Ogg’s and its neighborhood were 
there; and it would have been worth while to come even 
from a distance, to see the fine old hall, with its open roof 
and carved oaken rafters, and great oaken folding-doors, 
and light shed down from a height on the many-colored 
show beneath; a very quaint place, with broad faded stripes 
painted on the walls, and here and there a show of heraldic 
animals of a bristly, long-snouted character, the cherished 
emblems of a noble family once the seigniors of this now 


THE GREAT TEMPTATION 


471 


civic hall. A grand arch, cut in the upper wall at one end, 
surmounted an oaken orchestra, with an open room behind 
it, where hot-house plants and stalls for refreshments were 
disposed; an agreeable resort for gentlemen disposed to 
loiter, and yet to exchange the occasional crush down below 
for a more commodious point of view. In fact, the per¬ 
fect fitness of this ancient building for an admirable modern 
purpose, that made charity truly elegant, and led through 
vanity up to the supply of a deficit, was so striking that 
hardly a person entered the room without exchanging the 
remark more than once. 

Near the great arch over the orchestra was the stone oriel 
with painted glass, which was one of the venerable incon¬ 
sistencies of the old hall; and it was close by this that 
Lucy had her stall, for the convenience of certain large 
plain articles which she had taken charge of for Mrs. Kenn. 
Maggie had begged to sit at the open end of the stall, 
and to have the sale of these articles rather than of bead- 
mats and other elaborate products of which she had but 
a dim understanding. But it soon appeared that the gen¬ 
tlemen’s dressing-gowns, which were among her commod¬ 
ities, were objects of such general attention and inquiry, 
and excited so troublesome a curiosity as to their lining 
and comparative merits, together with a determination to 
test them by trying on, as to make her post a very con¬ 
spicuous one. The ladies who had commodities of their 
own to sell, and did not want dressing-gowns, saw at once 
the frivolity and bad taste of this masculine preference 
for goods which any tailor could furnish; and it is pos¬ 
sible that the emphatic notice of various kinds which was 
drawn toward Miss Tulliver on this public occasion, threw 
a very strong and unmistakable light on her subsequent 
conduct in many minds then present. Not that anger on 
account of spurned beauty can dwell in the celestial breasts 
of charitable ladies, but rather that the errors of persons 
who have once been much admired necessarily take a 
deeper tinge from the mere force of contrast; and also, 
that to-day Maggie’s conspicuous position, for the first time, 


472 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


mad© evident certain characteristics which were subse¬ 
quently felt to have an explanatory bearing. There was 
something rather bold in Miss Tulliver’s direct gaze, and 
something undefinably coarse in the style of her beauty, 
which placed her, in the opinion of all feminine judges, far 
below her cousin Miss Deane; for the ladies of St. Ogg’s 
had now completely ceded to Lucy their hypothetic claims 
on the admiration of Mr. Stephen Guest. 

As for dear little Lucy herself, her late benevolent tri¬ 
umph about the Mill, and all the affectionate projects she 
was cherishing for Maggie and Philip, helped to give her 
the highest spirits to-day, and she felt nothing but pleasure 
in the evidence of Maggie’s attractiveness. It is true, she 
was looking very charming herself, and Stephen was paying 
her the utmost attention on this public occasion; jealously 
buying up the articles he had seen under her fingers in the 
process of making, and gayly helping her to cajole the male 
customers into the purchase of the most effeminate futili¬ 
ties. He chose to lay aside his hat and wear a scarlet fez 
of her embroidering; but by superficial observers this was 
necessarily liable to be interpreted less as a compliment to 
Lucy than as a mark of coxcombry. “ Guest is a great 
coxcomb,” young Torry observed; “but then he is a priv¬ 
ileged person in St. Ogg’s — he carries all before him; if 
another fellow did such things, everybody would say he 
made a fool of himself.” 

And Stephen purchased absolutely nothing from Maggie, 
until Lucy said, in rather a vexed undertone, — 

“See, now; all the things of Maggie’s knitting will be 
gone, and you will not have bought one. There are those 
deliciously soft warm things for the wrists, — do buy them.” 

“ Oh no,” said Stephen, “ they must be intended for im¬ 
aginative persons, who can chill themselves on this warm 
day by thinking of the frosty Caucasus. Stern reason is my 
forte, you know. You must get Philip to buy those. By 
the way, why doesn’t he come? ” 

“He never likes going where there are many people, 
though I enjoined him to come. He said he would buy up 


THE GREAT TEMPTATION 


473 


any of my goods that the rest of the world rejected. But 
now, do go and buy something of Maggie.” 

“ No, no; see, she has got a customer; there is old Wakem 
himself just coming up.” 

Lucy’s eyes turned with anxious interest toward Maggie 
to see how she went through this first interview, since a 
sadly memorable time, with a man toward whom she must 
have so strange a mixture of feelings; but she was pleased 
to notice that Wakem had tact enough to enter at once 
into talk about the bazaar wares, and appear interested 
in purchasing, smiling now and then kindly at Maggie, and 
not calling on her to speak much, as if he observed that 
she was rather pale and tremulous. 

“ Why, Wakem is making himself particularly amiable to 
your cousin,” said Stephen, in an undertone to Lucy; “ is 
it pure magnanimity? You talked of a family quarrel.” 

“ Oh, that will soon be quite healed, I hope,” said Lucy, 
becoming a little indiscreet in her satisfaction, and speaking 
with an air of significance. But Stephen did not appear to 
notice this, and as some lady-purchasers came up, he lounged 
on toward Maggie’s end, handling trifles and standing aloof 
until Wakem, who had taken out his purse, had finished 
his transactions. 

“ My son came with me,” he overheard Wakem saying, 
“ but he has vanished into some other part of the building, 
and has left all these charitable gallantries to me. I hope 
you’ll reproach him for his shabby conduct.” 

She returned his smile and bow without speaking, and he 
turned away, only then observing Stephen, and nodding 
to him. Maggie, conscious that Stephen was still there, 
busied herself with counting money, and avoided looking up. 
She had been well pleased that he had devoted himself to 
Lucy to-day, and had not come near her. They had begun 
the morning with an indifferent salutation, and both had 
rejoiced in being aloof from each other, like a patient who 
has actually done without his opium, in spite of former 
failures in resolution. And during the last few days they 
had even been making up their minds to failures, looking 


474 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


to the outward events that must soon come to sepa¬ 
rate them, as a reason for dispensing with self-conquest in 
detail. 

Stephen moved step by step as if he were being unwill¬ 
ingly dragged, until he had got round the open end of the 
stall, and was half hidden by a screen of draperies. Maggie 
went on counting her money till she suddenly heard a deep 
gentle voice saying, “Aren’t you very tired? Do let me 
bring you something, — some fruit or jelly, mayn’t I? ” 

The unexpected tones shook her like a sudden accidental 
vibration of a harp close by her. 

“ Oh no, thank you,” she said faintly, and only half 
looking up for an instant. 

“ You look so pale,” Stephen insisted, in a more entreating 
tone. “ I’m sure you’re exhausted. I must disobey you, and 
bring something.” 

“ No, indeed, I couldn’t take it.” 

“ Are you angry with me? What have I done? Do look 
at me.” 

“ Pray, go away,” said Maggie, looking at him helplessly, 
her eyes glancing immediately from him to the opposite 
corner of the orchestra, which was half hidden by the folds 
of the old faded green curtain. Maggie had no sooner ut¬ 
tered this entreaty than she was wretched at the admission 
it implied; but Stephen turned away at once, and follow¬ 
ing her upward glance, he saw Philip Wakem seated in the 
half-hidden corner, so that he could command little more 
than that angle of the hall in which Maggie sat. An entirely 
new thought occurred to Stephen, and linking itself with 
what he had observed of Wakem’s manner, and with Lucy’s 
reply to his observation, it convinced him that there had 
been some former relation between Philip and Maggie be¬ 
yond that childish one of which he had heard. More than 
one impulse made him immediately leave the hall and go up¬ 
stairs to the refreshment-room, where, walking up to Philip, 
he sat down behind him, and put his hand on his shoulder. 

“ Are you studying for a portrait, Phil,” he said, “ or for 
a sketch of that oriel window? By George, it makes a 


THE GREAT TEMPTATION 475 

capital bit from this dark corner, with the curtain just 
marking it off.” 

“ I have been studying expression,” said Philip, curtly. 

“ What! Miss Tulliver’s ? It’s rather of the savage- 
moody order to-day, I think, — something of the fallen 
princess serving behind a counter. Her cousin sent me to 
her with a civil offer to get her some refreshment, but I have 
been snubbed, as usual. There’s a natural antipathy be¬ 
tween us, I suppose; I have seldom the honor to please 
her.” 

“ What a hypocrite you are! ” said Philip, flushing an¬ 
grily. 

“ What! because experience must have told me that I’m 
universally pleasing? I admit the law, but there’s some 
disturbing force here.” 

“ I am going,” said Philip, rising abruptly. 

“So am I — to get a breath of fresh air; this place gets 
oppressive. I think I have done suit and service long 
enough.” 

The two friends walked downstairs together without 
speaking. Philip turned through the outer door into the 
courtyard; but Stephen, saying, “ Oh, by the by, I must 
call in here,” went on along the passage to one of the rooms 
at the other end of the building, which were appropriated 
to the town library. He had the room all to himself, and 
a man requires nothing less than this when he wants to 
dash his cap on the table, throw himself astride a chair, 
and stare at a high brick wall with a frown which would 
not have been beneath the occasion if he had been slaying 
“ the giant Python.” The conduct that issues from a moral 
conflict has often so close a resemblance to vice that the 
distinction escapes all outward judgments founded on a mere 
comparison of actions. It is clear to you, I hope, that 
Stephen was not a hypocrite, —- capable of deliberate 
doubleness for a selfish end; and yet his fluctuations between 
the indulgence of a feeling and the systematic concealment 
of it might have made a good case in support of Philip’s 
accusation. 


476 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


Meanwhile, Maggie sat at her stall cold and trembling, 
with that painful sensation in the eyes which comes from 
resolutely repressed tears. Was her life to be always like 
this, — always bringing some new source of inward strife? 
She heard confusedly the busy, indifferent voices around 
her, and wished her mind could flow into that easy babbling 
current. It was at this moment that Dr. Kenn, who had 
quite lately come into the hall, and was now walking down 
the middle with his hands behind him, taking a general 
view, fixed his eyes on Maggie for the first time, and was 
struck with the expression of pain on her beautiful face. 
She was sitting quite still, for the stream of customers had 
lessened at this late hour in the afternoon; the gentlemen 
had chiefly chosen the middle of the day, and Maggie’s stall 
was looking rather bare. This, with her absent, pained ex¬ 
pression, finished the contrast between her and her com¬ 
panions, who were all bright, eager, and busy. He was 
strongly arrested. Her face had naturally drawn his at¬ 
tention as a new and striking one at church, and he had 
been introduced to her during a short call on business at 
Mr. Deane’s, but he had never spoken more than three 
words to her. He walked toward her now, and Maggie, 
perceiving some one approaching, roused herself to look up 
and be prepared to speak. She felt a childlike, instinctive 
relief from the sense of uneasiness in this exertion, when she 
saw it was Dr. Kenn’s face that was looking at her; that 
plain, middle-aged face, with a grave, penetrating kindness 
in it, seeming to tell of a human being who had reached a 
firm, safe strand, but was looking with helpful pity toward 
the strugglers still tossed by the waves, had an effect on 
Maggie at this moment which was afterward remembered 
by her as if it had been a promise. The middle-aged, who 
have lived through their strongest emotions, but are yet in 
the time when memory is still half passionate and not 
merely contemplative, should surely be a sort of natural 
priesthood, whom life has disciplined and consecrated to be 
the refuge and rescue of early stnmblers and victims of 
self-despair. Most of us at some moment in our young 



THE GREAT TEMPTATION 


477 


lives would have welcomed a priest of that natural order 
in any sort of canonicals or uncanonicals, but had to scramble 
upward into all the difficulties of nineteen entirely without 
such aid, as Maggie did. 

“ You find your office rather a fatiguing one, I fear, Miss 
Tulliver,” said Dr. Kenn. 

“ It is, rather,” said Maggie, simply, not being accus¬ 
tomed to simper amiable denials of obvious facts. 

“ But I can tell Mrs. Kenn that you have disposed of 
her goods very quickly,” he added; “ she will be very much 
obliged to you.” 

“ Oh, I have done nothing; the gentlemen came very fast 
to buy the dressing-gowns and embroidered waistcoats, but 
I think any of the other ladies would have sold more; I 
didn’t know what to say about them.” 

Dr. Kenn smiled. “ I hope I’m going to have you as a 
permanent parishioner now, Miss Tulliver; am I? You 
have been at a distance from us hitherto.” 

“ I have been a teacher in a school, and I’m going into 
another situation of the same kind very soon.” 

“Ah? I was hoping you would remain among your 
friends, who are all in this neighborhood, I believe.” 

“ Oh, I must go,” said Maggie, earnestly, looking at Dr. 
Kenn with an expression of reliance, as if she had told 
him her history in those three words. It was one of those 
moments of implicit revelation which will sometimes happen 
even between people who meet quite transiently, — on a 
mile’s journey, perhaps, or when resting by the wayside. 
There is always this possibility of a word or look from a 
stranger to keep alive the sense of human brotherhood. 

Dr. Kenn’s ear and eye took in all the signs that this 
brief confidence of Maggie’s was charged with meaning. 

“ I understand,” he said; “ you feel it right to go. But 
that will not prevent our meeting again, I hope; it will not 
prevent my knowing you better, if I can be of any service 
to you.” 

He put out his hand and pressed hers kindly before he 
turned away. 


478 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


“ She has some trouble or other at heart,” he thought. 
“ Poor child! she looks as if she might turn out to be one 
of 

1 The souls by nature pitched too high, 

By suffering plunged too low.’ 

There’s something wonderfully honest in those beautiful 
eyes.” 

It may be surprising that Maggie, among whose many 
imperfections an excessive delight in admiration and ac¬ 
knowledged supremacy was not absent now, any more than 
when she was instructing the gypsies with a view toward 
achieving a royal position among them, was not more elated 
on a day when she had had the tribute of so many looks 
and smiles, together with that satisfactory consciousness 
which had necessarily come from being taken before Lucy’s 
cheval-glass, and made to look at the full length of her 
tall beauty, crowned by the night of her massy hair. Maggie 
had smiled at herself then, and for the moment had forgotten 
everything in the sense of her own beauty. If that state 
of mind could have lasted, her choice would have been to 
have Stephen Guest at her feet, offering her a life filled 
with all luxuries, with daily incense of adoration near and 
distant, and with all possibilities of culture at her command. 
But there were things in her stronger than vanity, — pas¬ 
sion and affection, and long, deep memories of early dis¬ 
cipline and effort, of early claims on her love and pity; and 
the stream of vanity was soon swept along and mingled 
imperceptibly with that wider current which was at its 
highest force to-day, under the double urgency of the events 
and inward impulses brought by the last week. 

Philip had not spoken to her himself about the removal 
of obstacles between them on his father’s side, — he shrank 
from that; but he had told everything to Lucy, with the 
hope that Maggie, being informed through her, might giye 
him some encouraging sign that their being brought thus 
much nearer to each other was a happiness to her. The 
rush of conflicting feelings was too great for Maggie to say 


THE GREAT TEMPTATION 479 

much when Lucy, with a face breathing playful joy, like 
one of Correggio’s cherubs, poured forth her triumphant 
revelation; and Lucy could hardly be surprised that she 
could do little more than cry with gladness at the thought 
of her father’s wish being fulfilled, and of Tom’s getting the 
Mill again in reward for all his hard striving. The details 
of preparation for the bazaar had then come to usurp Lucy’s 
attention for the next few days, and nothing had been said 
by the cousins on subjects that were likely to rouse deeper 
feelings. Philip had been to the house more than once, 
but Maggie 'had had no private conversation with him, and 
thus she had been left to fight her inward battle without 
interference. 

But when the bazaar was fairly ended, and the cousins 
were alone again, resting together at home, Lucy said,— 

“ You must give up going to stay with your aunt Moss 
the day after to-morrow, Maggie; write a note to her, and 
tell her you have put it off at my request, and I’ll send 
the man with it. She won’t be displeased; you’ll have 
plenty of time to go by-and-by; and I don’t want you to 
go out of the way just now.” 

“ Yes, indeed I must go, dear; I can’t put it off. I 
wouldn’t leave aunt Gritty out for the world. And I shall 
have very little time, for I’m going away to a new situation 
on the 25th of June.” 

“ Maggie! ” said Lucy, almost white with astonishment. 

“ I didn’t tell you, dear,” said Maggie, making a great 
effort to command herself, “ because you’ve been so busy. 
But some time ago I wrote to our old governess, Miss Firniss, 
to ask her to let me know if she met with any situation that 
I could fill, and the other day I had a letter from her tell¬ 
ing me that I could take three orphan pupils of hers to 
the coast during the holidays, and then make trial of a 
situation with her as teacher. I wrote yesterday to accept 
the offer.” 

Lucy felt so hurt that for some moments she was unable 
to speak. 

“ Maggie,” she said at last, “ how could you be so unkind 


480 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


to me — not to tell me — to take such a step — and now! ” 
She hesitated a little, and then added, “ And Philip ? I 
thought everything was going to be so happy. Oh, Maggie, 
what is the reason? Give it up; let me write. There is 
nothing now to keep you and Philip apart.” 

“ Yes,” said Maggie, faintly. “ There is Tom’s feeling. 
He said I must give him up if I married Philip. And I 
know he will not change — at least not for a long while — 
unless something happened to soften him.” 

“ But I will talk to him; he’s coming back this week. 
And this good news about the Mill will soften him. And 
I’ll talk to him about Philip. Tom’s always very compliant 
to me; I don’t think he’s so obstinate.” 

“ But I must go,” said Maggie, in a distressed voice. “ I 
must leave some time to pass. Don’t press me to stay, dear 
Lucy.” 

Lucy was silent for two or three minutes, looking away 
and ruminating. At length she knelt down by her cousin, 
and looking up in her face with anxious seriousness, said, — 

“ Maggie, is it that you don’t love Philip well enough to 
marry him? Tell me—trust me.” 

Maggie held Lucy’s hands tightly in silence a little while. 
,Her own hands were quite cold. But when she spoke, her 
voice was quite clear and distinct. 

“ Yes, Lucy, I would choose to marry him. I think it 
would be the best and highest lot for me, — to make his 
life happy. He loved me first. No one else could be quite 
what he is to me. But I can’t divide myself from my 
brother for life. I must go away, and wait. Pray don’t 
speak to me again about it.” 

Lucy obeyed in pain and wonder. The next word she said 
was, — 

“ Well, dear Maggie, at least you will go to the dance at 
Park House to-morrow, and have some music and bright¬ 
ness, before you go to pay these dull dutiful visits. Ah! 
here come aunty and the tea.” 


THE GREAT TEMPTATION 


481 


CHAPTER X 

THE SPELL SEEMS BROKEN 

f I ^HE suite of rooms opening into each other at Park 
X House looked duly brilliant with lights and flowers 
and the personal splendors of sixteen couples, with attendant 
parents and guardians. The focus of brilliancy was the 
long drawing-room, where the dancing went forward, un¬ 
der the inspiration of the grand piano; the library, into 
which it opened at one end, had the more sober illumina¬ 
tion of maturity, with caps and cards; and at the other 
end the pretty sitting-room, with a conservatory attached, 
was left as an occasional cool retreat. Lucy, who had laid 
aside her black for the first time, and had her pretty slim¬ 
ness set off by an abundant dress of white crape, was the 
acknowledged queen of the occasion; for this was one of 
the Miss Guests’ thoroughly condescending parties, in¬ 
cluding no member of any aristocracy higher than that of 
St. Ogg’s, and stretching to the extreme limits of commercial 
and professional gentility. 

. Maggie at first refused to dance, saying that she had for¬ 
gotten all the figures — it was so many years since she had 
danced at school; and she was glad to have that excuse, 
for it is ill dancing with a heavy heart. But at length the 
music wrought in her young limbs, and the longing came; 
even though it was the horrible young Torry, who walked 
up a second time to try and persuade her. She warned him 
that she could not dance anything but a country-dance; 
but he, of course, was willing to wait for that high felicity, 
meaning only to be complimentary when he assured her at 
several intervals that it was a “ great bore ” that she couldn’t 
waltz, he would have liked so much to waltz with her. 
But at last it was the turn of the good old-fashioned dance 
which has the least of vanity and the most of merriment in 
it, and Maggie quite forgot her troublous life in a childlike 
enjoyment of that half-rustic rhythm which seems to banish 


482 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


pretentious etiquette. She felt quite charitably toward 
young Torry, as his hand bore her along and held her up 
in the dance; her eyes and cheeks had that fire of young 
joy in them which will flame out if it can find the least 
breath to fan it; and her simple black dress, with its bit 
of black lace, seemed like the dim setting of a jewel. 

Stephen had not yet asked her to dance; had not yet 
paid her more than a passing civility. Since yesterday, that 
inward vision of her which perpetually made part of his 
consciousness, had been half screened by the image of Philip 
Wakem, which came across it like a blot; there was some 
attachment between her and Philip; at least there was an 
attachment on his side, which made her feel in some bond¬ 
age. Here, then, Stephen told himself, was another claim of 
honor which called on him to resist the attraction that was 
continually threatening to overpower him. He told himself 
so; and yet he had once or twice felt a certain savage re¬ 
sistance, and at another moment a shuddering repugnance, 
to this intrusion of Philip’s image, which almost made it a 
new incitement to rush toward Maggie and claim her for 
himself. Nevertheless, he had done what he meant to do 
this evening, — he had kept aloof from her; he had hardly 
looked at her; and he had been gayly assiduous to Lucy. 
But now his eyes were devouring Maggie; he felt inclined 
to kick young Torry out of the dance, and take his place. 
Then he wanted the dance to end that he might get rid 
of his partner. The possibility that he too should dance 
with Maggie, and have her hand in his so long, was be¬ 
ginning to possess him like a thirst. But even now their 
hands were meeting in the dance, — were meeting still to 
the very end of it, though they were far off each other. 

Stephen hardly knew what happened, or in what auto¬ 
matic way he got through the duties of politeness in the 
interval, until he was free and saw Maggie seated alone 
again, at the farther end of the room. He made his way 
toward her round the couples that were forming for the 
waltz; and when Maggie became conscious that she was the 
person he sought, she felt, in spite of all the thoughts that 


483 


THE GREAT TEMPTATION 

had gone before, a glowing gladness, at heart. Her eyes and 
cheeks were still brightened with her childlike enthusiasm 
in the dance; her whole frame was set to joy and tenderness; 
even the coming pain could not seem bitter, — she was 
ready to welcome it as a part of life, for life at this moment 
seemed a keen, vibrating consciousness poised above pleasure 
or pain. This one, this last night, she might expand unre¬ 
strainedly in the warmth of the present, without those chill, 
eating thoughts of the past and the future. 

“ They’re going to waltz again,” said Stephen, bending to 
speak to her, with that glance and tone of subdued tender¬ 
ness which young dreams create to themselves in the sum¬ 
mer woods when low, cooing voices fill the air. Such glances 
and tones bring the breath of poetry with them into a 
room that is half stifling with glaring gas and hard flirta¬ 
tion. 

“ They are going to waltz again. It is rather dizzy work 
to look on, and the room is very warm; shall we walk about 
a little? ” 

He took her hand and placed it within his arm, and 
they walked on into the sitting-room, where the tables were 
strewn with engravings for the accommodation of visitors 
who would not want to look at them. But no visitors were 
here at this moment. They passed on into the conservatory. 

“ How strange and unreal the trees and flowers look with 
the lights among them! ” said Maggie, in a low voice. 
“ They look as if they belonged to an enchanted land, and 
would never fade away; I could fancy they were all made of 
jewels.” 

She was looking at the tier of geraniums* as she spoke, 
and Stephen made no answer; but he was looking at her; 
and does not a supreme poet blend light and sound into one, 
calling darkness mute, and light eloquent? Something 
strangely powerful there was in the light of Stephen’s long 
gaze, for it made Maggie’s face turn toward it and look 
upward at it, slowly, like a flower at the ascending bright¬ 
ness. And they walked unsteadily on, without feeling that 
they were walking; without feeling anything but that long, 


484 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


grave, mutual gaze which has the solemnity belonging to 
all deep human passion. The hovering thought that they 
must and would renounce each other made this moment of 
mute confession more intense in its rapture. 

But they had reached the end of the conservatory, and 
were obliged to pause and turn. The change of movement 
brought a new consciousness to Maggie; she blushed 
deeply, turned away her head, and drew her arm from 
Stephen’s, going up to some flowers to smell them. Stephen 
stood motionless, and still pale. 

“ Oh, may I get this rose? ” said Maggie, making a great 
effort to say something, and dissipate the burning sense of 
irretrievable confession. “ I think I am quite wicked with 
roses; I like to gather them and smell them till they have 
no scent left.” 

Stephen was mute; he was incapable of putting a sen¬ 
tence together, and Maggie bent her arm a little upward 
toward the large half-opened rose that had attracted her. 
Who has not felt the beauty of a woman’s arm? The un¬ 
speakable suggestions of tenderness that lie in the dimpled 
elbow, and all the varied gently lessening curves, down to 
the delicate wrist, with its tiniest, almost imperceptible nicks 
in the firm softness. A woman’s arm touched the soul of 
a great sculptor two thousand years ago, so that he wrought 
an image of it for the Parthenon which moves us still as it 
clasps lovingly the timeworn marble of a headless trunk. 
Maggie’s was such an arm as that, and it had the warm tints 
of life. 

A mad impulse seized on Stephen; he darted toward the 
arm, and showered kisses on it, clasping the wrist. 

But the next moment Maggie snatched it from him, and 
glared at him like a wounded war-goddess, quivering with 
rage and humiliation. 

“ How dare you? ” She spoke in a deeply shaken, half- 
smothered voice. “ What right have I given you to insult 
me? ” 

She darted from him into the adjoining room, and threw 
herself on the sofa, panting and trembling. 


THE GREAT TEMPTATION 


485 


A horrible punishment was come upon her for the sin 
of allowing a moment’s happiness that was treachery to 
Lucy, to Philip, to her own better soul. That momentary 
happiness had been smitten with a blight, a leprosy; Stephen 
thought more lightly of her than he did of Lucy. 

As for Stephen, he leaned back against the framework of 
the conservatory, dizzy with the conflict of passions, — love, 
rage, and confused despair; despair at his want of self- 
mastery, and despair that he had offended Maggie. 

The last feeling surmounted every other; to be by her 
side again and entreat forgiveness was the only thing that 
had the force of a motive for him, and she had not 
been seated more than a few minutes when he came and 
stood humbly before her. But Maggie’s bitter rage was 
unspent. 

“ Leave me to myself, if you please,” she said, with im¬ 
petuous haughtiness, “ and for the future avoid me.” 

Stephen turned away, and walked backward and for¬ 
ward at the other end of the room. There was the dire 
necessity of going back into the dancing-room again, and 
he was beginning to be conscious of that. They had been 
absent so short a time, that when he went in again the 
waltz was not ended. 

Maggie, too, was not long before she re-entered. All the 
pride of her nature was stung into activity; the hateful 
weakness which had dragged her within reach of this wound 
to her self-respect had at least wrought its own cure. The 
thoughts and temptations of the last month should all be 
flung away into an unvisited chamber of memory. There was 
nothing to allure her now; duty would be easy, and all the 
old calm purposes would reign peacefully once more. She 
re-entered the drawing-room still with some excited bright¬ 
ness in her face, but with a sense of proud self-command 
that defied anything to agitate her. She refused to dance 
again, but she talked quite readily and calmly with every 
one who addressed her. And when they got home that 
night, she kissed Lucy with a free heart, almost exulting 
in this scorching moment, which had delivered her from 


486 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


the possibility of another word or look that would have 
the stamp of treachery toward that gentle, unsuspicious 
sister. 

The next morning Maggie did not set off to Basset quite 
so soon as she had expected. Her mother was to accom¬ 
pany her in the carriage, and household business could not 
be despatched hastily by Mrs. Tulliver. So Maggie, who 
had been in a hurry to prepare herself, had to sit waiting, 
equipped for the drive, in the garden. Lucy was busy in 
the house wrapping up some bazaar presents for the younger 
ones at Basset, and when there was a loud ring at the door¬ 
bell, Maggie felt some alarm lest Lucy should bring out 
Stephen to her; it was sure to be Stephen. 

But presently the visitor came out into garden alone, and 
seated himself by her on the garden-chair. It was not 
Stephen. 

“ We can just catch the tips of the Scotch firs, Maggie, 
from this seat/’ said Philip. 

They had taken each other's hands in silence, but Maggie 
had looked at him with a more complete revival of the 
old childlike affectionate smile than he had seen before, 
and he felt encouraged. 

“ Yes," she said, “ I often look at them, and wish I could 
see the low sunlight on the stems again. But I have never 
been that way but once, — to the churchyard with my 
mother." 

“ I have been there, I go there, continually," said Philip. 
“ I have nothing but the past to live upon." 

A keen remembrance and keen pity impelled Maggie to 
put her hand in Philip's. They had so often walked hand 
in hand! 

“ I remember all the spots," she said, — “ just where 
you told me of particular things, beautiful stories that I 
had never heard of before." 

“You will go there again soon, won’t you, Maggie?" 
said Philip, getting timid. “ The Mill will soon be your 
brother’s home again." 

“ Yes; but I shall not be there," said Maggie. “ I shall 


THE GREAT TEMPTATION 487 

only hear of that happiness. I am going away again; Lucy 
has not told you, perhaps ? ” 

“ Then the future will never join on to the past again, 
Maggie? That book is quite closed? ” 

The gray eyes that had so often looked up at her with 
entreating worship looked up at her now, with a last strug¬ 
gling ray of hope in them, and Maggie met them with her 
large sincere gaze. 

“ That book never will be closed, Philip,” she said, with 
grave sadness; “ I desire no future that will break the ties 
of the past. But the tie to my brother is one of the strong¬ 
est. I can do nothing willingly that will divide me always 
from him.” 

“ Is that the only reason that would keep us apart for¬ 
ever, Maggie ? ” said Philip, with a desperate determination 
to have a definite answer. 

“ The only reason,” said Maggie, with calm decision. And 
she believed it. At that moment she felt as if the enchanted 
cup had been dashed to the ground. The reactionary ex¬ 
citement that gave her a proud self-mastery had not sub¬ 
sided, and she looked at the future with a sense of calm 
choice. 

They sat hand in hand without looking at each other or 
speaking for a few minutes; in Maggie’s mind the first 
scenes of love and parting were more present than the actual 
moment, and she was looking at Philip in the Red Deeps. 

Philip felt that he ought to have been thoroughly happy 
in that answer of hers; she was as open and transparent as 
a rock-pool. Why was he not thoroughly happy? Jealousy 
is never satisfied with anything short of an omniscience 
that would detect the subtlest fold of the heart. 


488 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


CHAPTER XI 

IN THE LANE 

M AGGIE had been four days at her aunt Moss’s, giving 
the early June sunshine quite a new brightness in 
the care-dimmed eyes of that affectionate woman, and 
making an epoch for her cousins great and small, who 
were learning her words and actions by heart* as if 
she had been a transient avatar of perfect wisdom and 
beauty. 

She was standing on the causeway with her aunt and 
a group of cousins feeding the chickens, at that quiet moment 
in the life of the farmyard before the afternoon milking¬ 
time. The great buildings round the hollow yard were as 
dreary and tumble-down as ever, but over the old garden- 
wall the straggling rose-bushes were beginning to toss their 
summer weight, and the gray wood and old bricks of the 
house, on its higher level, had a look of sleepy age in the 
broad afternoon sunlight that suited the quiescent time. 
Maggie, with her bonnet over her arm, was smiling down at 
the hatch of small fluffy chickens, when her aunt ex¬ 
claimed, — 

“ Goodness me! who is that gentleman coming in at the 
gate? ” 

It was a gentleman on a tall bay horse; and the flanks 
and neck of the horse were streaked black with fast riding. 
Maggie felt a beating at head and heart, horrible as the 
sudden leaping to life of a savage enemy who had feigned 
death. 

“ Who is it, my dear? ” said Mrs. Moss, seeing in Maggie’s 
face the evidence that she knew. 

“ It is Mr. Stephen Guest,” said Maggie, rather faintly. 
“ My cousin Lucy’s — a gentleman who is very intimate at 
my cousin’s.” 

•Stephen was already close to them, had jumped off his 
horse, and now raised his hat as he advanced. 


THE GREAT TEMPTATION 489 

“ Hold the horse, Willy,” said Mrs. Moss to the twelve- 
year-old boy. 

“ No, thank you,” said Stephen, pulling at the horse’s 
impatiently tossing head. “ I must be going again imme¬ 
diately. I have a message to deliver to you, Miss Tulliver, 
on private business. May I take the liberty of asking you 
to walk a few yards with me? ” 

He had a half-jaded, half-irritated look, such as a man 
gets when he has been dogged by some care or annoyance 
that makes his bed and his dinner of little use to him. He 
spoke almost abruptly, as if his errand were too pressing for 
him to trouble himself about what would be thought by 
Mrs. Moss of his visit and request. Good Mrs. Moss, rather 
nervous in the presence of this apparently haughty gentle¬ 
man, was inwardly wondering whether she would be doing 
right or wrong to invite him again to leave his horse and 
walk in, when Maggie, feeling all the embarrassment of the 
situation, and unable to say anything, put on her bonnet, 
and turned to walk toward the gate. 

Stephen turned too, and walked by her side, leading 
his horse. 

Not a word was spoken till they were out in the lane, and 
had walked four or five yards, when Maggie, who had been 
looking straight before her all the while, turned again to 
walk back, saying, with haughty resentment, — 

“ There is no need for me to go any farther. I don’t know 
whether you consider it gentlemanly and delicate conduct 
to place me in a position that forced me to come out with 
you, or whether you wished to insult me still further by 
thrusting an interview upon me in this way.” 

“ Of course you are angry with me for coming,” said 
Stephen, bitterly. “ Of course it is of no consequence what 
a man has to suffer; it is only your woman’s dignity that 
you care about.” 

Maggie gave a slight start, such as might have come 
from the slightest possible electric shock. 

“ As if it were not enough that I’m entangled in this 
way; that I’m mad with love for you; that I resist the 


490 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


strongest passion a man can feel, because I try to be true 
to other claims; but you must treat me as if I were a coarse 
brute, who would willingly offend you. And when, if I had 
my own choice, I should ask you to take my hand and my 
fortune and my whole life, and do what you liked with 
them! I know I forgot myself. I took an unwarrantable 
liberty. I hate myself for having done it. But I repented 
immediately; I’ve been repenting ever since. You ought not 
to think it unpardonable; a man who loves with his whole 
soul, as I do you, is liable to be mastered by his feelings for 
a moment; but you know — you must believe — that the 
worst pain I could have is to have pained you; that I would 
give the world to recall the error.” 

Maggie dared not speak, dared not turn her head. The 
strength that had come from resentment w r as all gone, and 
her lips were quivering visibly. She could not trust her¬ 
self to utter the full forgiveness that rose in answer to that 
confession. 

They were come nearly in front of the gate again, and 
she paused, trembling. 

“ You must not say these things; I must not hear them,” 
she said, looking down in misery, as Stephen came in front 
of her, to prevent her from going farther toward the gate. 
“ I’m very sorry for any pain you have to go through; but 
it is of no use to speak.” 

“ Yes, it is of use,” said Stephen, impetuously. “ It 
would be of use if you would treat me with some sort of 
pity and consideration, instead of doing me vile injustice 
in your mind. I could bear everything more quietly if I 
knew you didn’t hate me for an insolent coxcomb. Look 
at me; see what a hunted devil I am; I’Ve been riding 
thirty miles every day to get away from the thought of 
you.” 

Maggie did not — dared not — look. She had already 
seen the harassed face. But she said gently, — 

“ I don’t think any evil of you.” 

“ Then, dearest, look at me,” said Stephen, in deepest, 
tenderest tones of entreaty. “ Don’t go away from me yet. 


THE GREAT TEMPTATION 491 

Give me a moment’s happiness; make me feel you’ve for¬ 
given me.” 

“ Yes, I do forgive you,” said Maggie, shaken by those 
tones, and all the more frightened at herself. “ But pray let 
me go in again. Pray go away.” 

A great tear fell from under her lowered eyelids. 

“I can’t go away from you; I can’t leave you,” said 
Stephen, with still more passionate pleading. “ I shall come 
back again if you send me away with this coldness; I 
can’t answer for myself. But if you will go with me only 
a little way I can live on that. You see plainly enough that 
your anger has only made me ten times more unreasonable.” 

Maggie turned. But Tancred, the bay horse, began to 
make such spirited remonstrances against this frequent 
change of direction, that Stephen, catching sight of Willy 
Moss peeping through the gate, called out, “Here! just 
come and hold my horse for five minutes.” 

“ Oh, no,” said Maggie, hurriedly, “ my aunt will think 
it so strange.” 

“ Never mind,” Stephen answered impatiently; “ they 
don’t know the people at St. Ogg’s. Lead him up and down 
just here for five minutes,” he added to Willy, who was 
now close to them; and then he turned to Maggie’s side, 
and they walked on. It was clear that she must go on now. 

“ Take my arm,” said Stephen, entreatingly; and she took 
it, feeling all the while as if she were sliding downward in a 
nightmare. 

“ There is no end to this misery,” she began, struggling 
to repel the influence by speech. “ It is wicked — base — 
ever allowing a word or look that Lucy — that others might 
not have seen. Think of Lucy.” 

“I do think of her — bless her. If I didn’t-” Ste¬ 

phen had laid his hand on Maggie’s that rested on his arm, 
and they both felt it difficult to speak. 

“ And I have other ties,” Maggie went on, at last, with 
a desperate effort, “ even if Lucy did not exist.” 

“You are engaged to Philip Wakem?” said Stephen, 
hastily. “ Is it so ? ” 


492 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


“ I consider myself engaged to him; I don’t mean to 
marry any one else.” 

Stephen was silent again until they had turned out of the 
sun into a side lane, all grassy and sheltered. Then he burst 
out impetuously, — 

“ It is unnatural, it is horrible. Maggie, if you loved 
me as I love you, we should throw everything else to the 
winds for the sake of belonging to each other. We should 
break all these mistaken ties that were made in blindness, 
and determine to marry each other.” 

“I would rather die than fall into that temptation,” 
said Maggie, with deep, slow distinctness, all the gathered 
spiritual force of painful years coming to her aid in 
this extremity. She drew her arm from his as she 
spoke. 

“Tell me, then, that you don’t care for me,” he said, 
almost violently. “ Tell me that you love some one else 
better.” 

It darted through Maggie’s mind that here was a mode 
of releasing herself from outward struggle, — to tell Stephen 
that her whole heart was Philip’s. But her lips would not 
utter that, and she was silent. 

“ If you do love me, dearest,” said Stephen, gently, tak¬ 
ing up her hand again and laying it within his arm, “ it is 
better — it is right that we should marry each other. We 
can’t help the pain it will give. It is come upon us without 
our seeking; it is natural; it has taken hold of me in spite 
of every effort I have made to resist it. God knows, I’ve 
been trying to be faithful to tacit engagements, and I’ve 
only made things worse; I’d better have given way at 
first.” 

Maggie was silent. If it were not wrong — if she were 
once convinced of that, and need no longer beat and struggle 
against this current, soft and yet strong as the summer 
stream! 

“ Say ‘ yes,’ dearest,” said Stephen, leaning to look en- 
treatingly in her face. “ What could we care about in the 
whole world beside, if we belonged to each other ? ” 


THE GREAT TEMPTATION 


493 


Her breath was on his face, his lips were very near hers, 
but there was a great dread dwelling in his love for her. 

Her lips and eyelids quivered; she opened her eyes full on 
his for an instant, like a lovely wild animal timid and 
struggling under caresses, and then turned sharp round to¬ 
ward home again. 

“ And after all,” he went on, in an impatient tone, trying 
to defeat his own scruples as well as hers, “ I am breaking 
no positive engagement; if Lucy’s affections had been with¬ 
drawn from me and given to some one else, I should have 
felt no right to assert a claim on her. If you are not ab¬ 
solutely pledged to Philip, we are neither of us bound.” 

“You don’t believe that; it is not your real feeling,” 
said Maggie, earnestly. “ You feel, as I do, that the real 
tie lies in the feelings and expectations we have raised in 
other minds. Else all pledges might be broken, when there 
was no outward penalty. There would be no such thing 
as faithfulness.” 

Stephen was silent; he could not pursue that argument; 
the opposite conviction had wrought in him too strongly 
through his previous time of struggle. But it soon presented 
itself in a new form. 

“ The pledge can’t be fulfilled,” he said, with impetuous 
insistence. “It is unnatural; we can only pretend to give 
ourselves to any one else. There is wrong in that too; there 
may be misery in it for them as well as for us. Maggie, 
you must see that; you do see that.” 

He was looking eagerly at her face for the least sign of 
compliance; his large, firm, gentle grasp was on her hand. 
She was silent for a few moments, with her eyes fixed on 
the ground; then she drew a deep breath, and said, look¬ 
ing up at him with solemn sadness, — 

“ Oh, it is difficult, — life is very difficult! It seems right 
to me sometimes that we should follow our strongest feel¬ 
ing; but then, such feelings continually come across the 
ties that all our former life has made for us, —the ties 
that have made others dependent on us, — and would cut 
them in two. If life were quite easy and simple, as it might 


494 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


have been in Paradise, and we could always see that one 
being first toward whom — I mean, if life did not make 
duties for us before love comes, love would be a sign that 
two people ought to belong to each other. But I see — I 
feel it is not so now; there are things we must renounce in 
life; some of us must resign love. Many things are difficult 
and dark to me; but I see one thing quite clearly, — that I 
must not, cannot, seek my own happiness by sacrificing 
others. Love is natural; but surely pity and faithfulness 
and memory are natural too. And they would live in me 
still, and punish me if I did not obey them. I should be 
haunted by the suffering I had caused. Our love would 
be poisoned. Don’t urge me; help me, — help me, became 
I love you.” 

Maggie had become more and more earnest as she went 
on; her face had become flushed, and her eyes fuller and 
fuller of appealing love. Stephen had the fibre of noble¬ 
ness in him that vibrated to her appeal; but in the same 
moment — how could it be otherwise ? — that pleading 
beauty gained new power over him. 

“ Dearest,” he said, in scarcely more than a whisper, 
while his arm stole round her, “ I’ll do, I’ll bear anything 
you wish. But — one kiss — one — the last — before we 
part.” 

One kiss, and then a long look, until Maggie said trem¬ 
ulously, “ Let me go, — let me make haste back.” 

She hurried along and not another word was spoken. 
Stephen stood still and beckoned when they came within 
sight of Willy and the horse, and Maggie went on through 
the gate. Mrs. Moss was standing alone at the door of the 
old porch; she had sent all the cousins in, with kind thought¬ 
fulness. It might be a joyful thing that Maggie had a rich 
and handsome lover, but she would naturally feel embar¬ 
rassed at coming in again; and it might not be joyful. In 
either case Mrs. Moss waited anxiously to receive Maggie by 
herself. The speaking face told plainly enough that, if 
there was joy, it was of a very agitating, dubious sort. 

“Sit down here a bit, my dear.” She drew Maggie 


THE GREAT TEMPTATION 


495 


into the porch, and sat down on the bench by her; there 
was no privacy in the house. 

“Oh, aunt Gritty, I’m very wretched! I wish I could 
have died when I was fifteen. It seemed so easy to give 
things up then; it is so hard now.” 

The poor child threw her arms round her aunt’s neck, 
and fell into long, deep sobs. 


CHAPTER XII 

A FAMILY PARTY 

M AGGIE left her good aunt Gritty at the end of the 
week, and went to Garum Firs to pay her visit to 
aunt Pullet according to agreement. In the mean time 
very unexpected things had happened, and there was to be 
a family party at Garum to discuss and celebrate a change 
in the fortunes of the Tullivers, which was likely finally to 
carry away the shadow of their demerits like the last limb 
of an eclipse, and cause their hitherto obscured virtues to 
shine forth in full-rounded splendor. It is pleasant to know 
that a new ministry just come into office are not the only 
fellow-men who enjoy a period of high appreciation and 
full-blown eulogy; in many respectable families throughout 
this realm, relatives becoming creditable meet with a sim¬ 
ilar cordiality of recognition, which in its fine freedom from 
the coercion of any antecedents, suggests the hopeful possi¬ 
bility that we may some day without any notice find our¬ 
selves in full millennium, with cockatrices who have ceased 
to bite, and wolves that no longer show their teeth with any 
but the blandest intentions. 

Lucy came so early as to have the start even of aunt 
Glegg; for she longed to have some undisturbed talk with 
Maggie about the wonderful news. It seemed, did it not? 
said Lucy, with her prettiest air of wisdom, as if every¬ 
thing, even other people’s misfortunes (poor creatures!) 


496 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


were conspiring now to make poor dear aunt Tulliver, and 
cousin Tom, and naughty Maggie too, if she were not ob¬ 
stinately bent on the contrary, as happy as they deserved to 
be after all their troubles. To think that the very day — 
the very day — after Tom had come back from Newcastle, 
that unfortunate young Jetsome, whom Mr. Wakem had 
placed at the Mill, had been pitched off his horse in a 
drunken fit, and was lying at St. Ogg’s in a dangerous state, 
so that Wakem had signified his wish that the new pur¬ 
chasers should enter on the premises at once! It was very 
dreadful for that unhappy young man, but it did seem as 
if the misfortune had happened then, rather than at any 
other time, in order that cousin Tom might all the sooner 
have the fit reward of his exemplary conduct, — papa 
thought so very highly of him. Aunt Tulliver must cer¬ 
tainly go to the Mill now, and keep house for Tom; that 
was rather a loss to Lucy in the matter of household com¬ 
fort; but then, to think of poor aunty being in her old 
place again, and gradually getting comforts about her there! 

On this last point Lucy had her cunning projects, and 
when she and Maggie had made their dangerous way down 
the bright stairs into the handsome parlor, where the very 
sunbeams seemed cleaner than elsewhere, she directed her 
manoeuvres, as any other great tactician would have done, 
against the weaker side of the enemy. 

“ Aunt Pullet,” she said, seating herself on the sofa, and 
caressingly adjusting that lady’s floating cap-string, “ I want 
you to make up your mind what linen and things you will 
give Tom toward housekeeping; because you are always 
so generous, — you give such nice things, you know; and if 
you set th§ example, aunt Glegg will follow.” 

“ That she never can, my dear,” said Mrs. Pullet, with 
unusual vigor, “ for she hasn’t got the linen to follow suit 
wi’ mine, I can tell you. She’d niver the taste, not if she’d 
spend the money. Big checks and live things, like stags 
and foxes, all her table-linen is, — not a spot nor a diamont 
among ’em. But it’s poor work dividing one’s linen before 
one dies, — I niver thought to ha’ done that, Bessy,” Mrs. 


THE GREAT TEMPTATION 


497 


Pullet continued, shaking her head and looking at her sister 
Tulliver, “ when you and me chose the double diamont, the 
first flax iver we’d spun, and the Lord knows where yours 
is gone.” 

“ I’d no choice, I’m sure, sister,” said poor Mrs. Tulliver, 
accustomed to consider herself in the light of an accused 
person. “ I’m sure it was no wish o’ mine, iver, as I should 
lie awake o’ nights thinking o’ my best bleached linen all 
over the country.” 

“ Take a peppermint, Mrs. Tulliver,” said uncle Pullet, 
feeling that he was offering a cheap and wholesome form of 
comfort, which he was recommending by example. 

“ Oh, but aunt Pullet,” said Lucy, “ you’ve so much 
beautiful linen. And suppose you had had daughters! 
Then you must have divided it when they were married.” 

“ Well, I don’t say as I won’t do it,” said Mrs. Pullet, 
“ for now Tom’s so lucky, it’s nothing but right his friends 
should look on him and help him. There’s the tablecloths 
I bought at your sale, Bessy; it was nothing but good 
natur’ o’ me to buy ’em, for they’ve been lying in the chest 
ever since. But I’m not going to give Maggie any more 
o’ my Indy muslin and things, if she’s to go into service 
again, when she might stay and keep me company, and 
do my sewing for me, if she wasn’t wanted at her 
brother’s.” 

“ Going into service ” was the expression by which the 
Dodson mind represented to itself the position of teacher or 
governess; and Maggie’s return to that menial condition, 
now circumstances offered her more eligible prospects, was 
likely to be a sore point with all her relatives, besides Lucy. 
Maggie in her crude form, with her hair down her back, and 
altogether in a state of dubious promise, was a most un¬ 
desirable niece; but now she was capable of being at once 
ornamental and useful. The subject was revived in aunt 
and uncle Glegg’s presence, over the tea and muffins. 

“ Hegh, hegh! ” said Mr. Glegg, good-naturedly patting 
Maggie on the back, “ nonsense, nonsense! Don’t let us hear 
of you taking a place again, Maggie. Why, you must ha’ 


498 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


picked up half-a-dozen sweethearts at the bazaar; isn’t there 
one of ’em the right sort of article ? Come, now ? ” 

“ Mr. Glegg,” said his wife, with that shade of increased 
politeness in her severity which she always put on with her 
crisper fronts, “ you’ll excuse me, but you’re far too light 
for a man of your years. It’s respect and duty to her aunts, 
and the rest of her kin as are so good to her, should have 
kept my niece from fixing about going away again without 
consulting us; not sweethearts, if I’m to use such a word, 
though it was never heared in my family.” 

“ Why, what did they call us, when we went to see ’em, 
then, eh, neighbor Pullet? They thought us sweet enough 
then,” said Mr. Glegg, winking pleasantly; while Mr. Pullet, 
at the suggestion of sweetness, took a little more sugar. 

“ Mr. Glegg,” said Mrs. G., “ if you’re going to be undeli- 
cate, let me know.” 

“ La, Jane, your husband’s only joking,” said Mrs. Pullet; 
“ let him joke while he’s got health and strength. There’s 
poor Mr. Tilt got his mouth drawn all o’ one side, and 
couldn’t laugh if he was to try.” 

“ I’ll trouble you for the muffineer, then, Mr. Glegg,” said 
Mrs. G., “ if I may be so bold to interrupt your joking. 
Though it’s other people must see the joke in a niece’s put¬ 
ting a slight on her mother’s eldest sister, as is the head o’* 
the family; and only coming in and out on short visits, all 
the time she’s been in the town, and then settling to go away 
without my knowledge, — as I’d laid caps out on purpose 
for her to make ’em up for me, — and me as have divided 
my money so equal-” 

“ Sister,” Mrs. Tulliver broke in anxiously, “ I’m sure 
Maggie never thought o’ going away without staying at 
your house as well as the others. Not as it’s my wish she 
should go away at all, but quite contrairy. I’m sure I’m 
innocent. I’ve said over and over again, ' My dear, you’ve 
no call to go away.’ But there’s ten days or a fortnight 
Maggie’ll have before she’s fixed to go; she can stay at your 
house just as well, and I’ll step in when I can, and so will 
Lucy.” 


THE GREAT TEMPTATION 


499 


“ Bessy,” said Mrs. Glegg, “ if you’d exercise a little more 
thought, you might know I should hardly think it was worth 
while to unpin a bed, and go to all that trouble now, just at 
the end o’ the time, when our house isn’t above a quarter of 
an hour’s walk from Mr. Deane’s. She can come the first 
thing in the morning, and go back the last at night, and be 
thankful she’s got a good aunt so close to her to come and 
sit with. I know I should, when I was her age.” 

“ La, Jane,” said Mrs. Pullet, “ it ’ud do your beds good 
to have somebody to sleep in ’em. There’s that striped 
room smells dreadful mouldy, and the glass mildewed like 
anything. I’m sure I thought I should be struck with death 
when you took me in.” 

“ Oh, there is Tom! ” exclaimed Lucy, clapping her hands. 
“ He’s come on Sindbad, as I told him. I was afraid he was 
not going to keep his promise.” 

Maggie jumped up to kiss Tom as he entered, with strong 
feeling, at this first meeting since the prospect of returning 
to the Mill had been opened^to him; and she kept his hand, 
leading him to the chair by her side. To have no cloud be¬ 
tween herself and Tom was still a perpetual yearning in her, 
that had its root deeper than all change. He smiled at her 
very kindly this evening, and said, “ Well, Magsie, how’s 
aunt Moss ? ” 

“ Come, come, sir,” said Mr. Glegg, putting out his hand. 
“ Why, you’re such a big man, you carry all before you, it 
seems. You’re come into your luck a good deal earlier than 
us old folks did; but I wish you joy, I wish you joy. You’ll 
get the Mill all for your own again some day, I’ll be bound. 
You won’t stop half-way up the hill.” 

“ But I hope he’ll bear in mind as it’s his mother’s family 
as he owes it to,” said Mrs. Glegg. “ If he hadn’t had them 
to take after, he’d ha’ been poorly off. There was never 
any failures, nor lawing, nor wastefulness in our family, nor 
dying without wills-” 

“No, nor sudden deaths,” said aunt Pullet; “allays the 
doctor called in. But Tom had the Dodson skin; I said 
that from the first. And I don’t know what you mean to 


500 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


do, sister Glegg, but I mean to give him a tablecloth of all 
my three biggest sizes but one, besides sheets; I don’t say 
what more I shall do; but that I shall do, and if I should 
die to-morrow, Mr. Pullet, you’ll bear it in mind, — though 
you’ll be blundering with the keys, and never remember as 
that on the third shelf o’ the left-hand wardrobe, behind the 
nightcaps with the broad ties, — not the narrow-frilled uns, 
— is the key o’ the drawer in the Blue Room, where the key 
o’ the Blue Closet is. You’ll make a mistake, and I shall 
niver be worthy to know it. You’ve a memory for my pills 
and draughts, wonderful, — I’ll allays say that of you,— 
but you’re lost among the keys.” This gloomy prospect of 
the confusion that would ensue on her decease was very 
affecting to Mrs. Pullet. 

“ You carry it too far, Sophy, — that locking in and out,” 
said Mrs. Glegg, in a tone of some disgust at this folly. 
“ You go beyond your own family. There’s nobody can say 
I don’t lock up; but I do what’s reasonable, and no more. 
And as for the linen, I shall look out what’s serviceable, to 
make a present of to my nephey; I’ve got cloth as has 
never been whitened, better worth having than other peo¬ 
ple’s fine holland; and I hope he’ll lie down in it and think 
of his aunt.” 

Tom thanked Mrs. Glegg, but evaded any promise to 
meditate nightly on her virtues; and Mr. Glegg effected a 
diversion for him by asking about Mr. Deane’s intentions 
concerning steam. 

Lucy had had her far-sighted views in begging Tom to 
come on Sindbad. It appeared, when it was time to go 
home, that the man-servant was to ride the horse, and 
cousin Tom was to drive home his mother and Lucy. “ You 
must sit by yourself, aunty,” said that contriving young 
lady, “ because I must sit by Tom; I’ve a great deal to say 
to him.” 

In the eagerness of her affectionate anxiety for Maggie, 
Lucy could not persuade herself to defer a conversation 
about her with Tom, who, she thought, with such a cup of 
joy before him as this rapid fulfilment of his wish about the 


THE GREAT TEMPTATION 


501 


Mill, must become pliant and flexible. Her nature supplied 
her with no key to Tom’s; and she was puzzled as weir as 
pained to notice the unpleasant change on his countenance 
when she gave him the history of the way in which Philip 
had used his influence with his father. She had counted on 
this revelation as a great stroke of policy, which was to turn 
Tom’s heart toward Philip at once, and, besides that, prove 
that the elder Wakem was ready to receive Maggie with all 
the honors of a daughter-in-law. Nothing was wanted, 
then, but for dear Tom, who always had that pleasant 
smile when he looked at cousin Lucy, to turn completely 
round, say the opposite of what he had always said before, 
and declare that he, for his part, was delighted that all the 
old grievances should be healed, and that Maggie should 
have Philip with all suitable despatch; in cousin Lucy’s 
opinion nothing could be easier. 

But to minds strongly marked by the positive and nega¬ 
tive qualities that create severity, — strength of will, con¬ 
scious rectitude of purpose, narrowness of imagination and 
intellect, great power of self-control, and a disposition to 
exert control over others, — prejudices come as the natural 
food of tendencies which can get no sustenance out of that 
complex, fragmentary, doubt-provoking knowledge which 
we call truth. Let a prejudice be bequeathed, carried in 
the air, adopted by hearsay, caught in through the eye,— 
however it may come, these minds will give it a habitation; 
it is something to assert strongly and bravely, something to 
fill up the void of spontaneous ideas, something to impose 
on others with the authority of conscious right; it is at once 
a staff and a baton. Every prejudice that will answer these 
purposes is self-evident. Our good, upright Tom Tulliver’s 
mind was of this class; his inward criticism of his father’s 
faults did not prevent him from adopting his father’s preju¬ 
dice; it was a prejudice against a man of lax principle and 
lax life, and it was a meeting-point for all the disappointed 
feelings of family and personal pride. Other feelings added 
their force to produce Tom’s bitter repugnance to Philip, 
and to Maggie’s union with him; and notwithstanding 


502 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


Lucy’s power over her strong-willed cousin, she got nothing 
blit a cold refusal ever to sanction such a marriage; but of 
course Maggie could do as she liked, — she had declared 
her determination to be independent. For Tom’s part, he 
held himself bound by his duty to his father’s memory, and 
by every manly feeling, never to consent to any relation 
with the Wakems. 

Thus, all that Lucy had effected by her zealous media¬ 
tion was to fill Tom’s mind with the expectation that Mag¬ 
gie’s perverse resolve to go into a situation again would 
presently metamorphose itself, as her resolves were apt to 
do, into something equally perverse, but entirely different, — 
a marriage with Philip Wakem. 


CHAPTER XIII 

BORNE ALONG BY THE TIDE 

I N LESS than a week Maggie was at St. Ogg’s again,— 
outw r ardly in much the same position as w’hen her visit 
there had just begun. It was easy for her to fill her morn¬ 
ings apart from Lucy without any obvious effort; for she 
had her promised visits to pay to her aunt Glegg, and it 
was natural that she should give her mother more than usual 
of her companionship in these last weeks, especially as there 
were preparations to be thought of for Tom’s housekeeping. 
But Lucy would hear of no pretext for her remaining away 
in the evenings; she must always come from aunt Glegg’s 
before dinner, — “ else what shall I have of you ? ” said 
Lucy, with a tearful pout that could not be resisted. And 
Mr. Stephen Guest had unaccountably taken to dining at 
Mr?Deane’s as often as possible, instead of avoiding that, 
as he used to do. At first he began his mornings with a 
resolution that he would not dine there, not even go in the 
evening, till Maggie was away. He had even devised a plan 
of starting off on a journey in this agreeable June weather; 


THE GREAT TEMPTATION 503 

the headaches which he had constantly been alleging as a 
ground for stupidity and silence were a sufficient ostensible 
motive. But the journey was not taken, and by the fourth 
morning no distinct resolution was formed about the eve¬ 
nings; they were only foreseen as times when Maggie would 
still be present for a little while, — when one more touch, one 
more glance, might be snatched. For why not? There was 
nothing to conceal between them; they knew, they had con¬ 
fessed their love, and they had renounced each other; they 
were going to part. Honor and conscience were going to 
divide them; Maggie, with that appeal from her inmost, 
soul, had decided it; but surely they might cast a lingering 
look at each other across the gulf, before they turned away 
never to look again till that strange light had forever faded 
out of their eyes. 

Maggie, all this time, moved about with a quiescence and 
even torpor of manner, so contrasted with her usual fitful 
brightness and ardor, that Lucy would have had to seek 
some other cause for such a change, if she had not been 
convinced that the position in which Maggie stood between 
Philip and her brother, and the prospect of her self-imposed 
wearisome banishment, were quite enough to account for 
a large amount of depression. But under this torpor there 
was a fierce battle of emotions, such as Maggie in all her life 
of struggle had never known or foreboded; it seemed to her 
as if all the worst evil in her had lain in ambush till now, 
and had suddenly started up full-armed, with hideous, over¬ 
powering strength! 

There were moments in which a cruel selfishness seemed 
to be getting possession of her; why should not Lucy, 
why should not Philip, suffer? She had had to suffer 
through many years of her life; and who had renounced 
anything for her? And when something like that fulness 
of existence — love, wealth, ease, refinement, all that her 
nature craved — was brought within her reach, why was 
she to forego it, that another might have it, — another, who 
perhaps needed it less? But amidst all this new passionate 
tumult there were the old voices making themselves heard 


504 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


with rising power, till, from time to time, the tumult seemed 
quelled. Was that existence which tempted her the full ex¬ 
istence she dreamed? Where, then, would be all the memo¬ 
ries of early striving; all the deep pity for another’s pain, 
which had been nurtured in her through years of affection 
and hardship; all the divine presentiment of something 
higher than mere personal enjoyment, which had made the 
sacredness of life? She might as well hope to enjoy walk¬ 
ing by maiming her feet, as hope to enjoy an existence in 
which she set out by maiming the faith and sympathy that 
were the best organs of her soul. And then, if pain were so 
hard to her, what was it to others? “Ah, God! preserve 
me from inflicting — give me strength to bear it.” How 
had she sunk into this struggle with a temptation that she 
would once have thought herself as secure from as from 
deliberate crime? When was that first hateful moment in 
which she had been conscious of a feeling that clashed with 
her truth, affection, and gratitude, and had not shaken it 
from her with horror, as if it had been a loathsome thing? 
And yet, since this strange, sweet, subduing influence did 
not, should not, conquer her, — since it was to remain simply 
her own suffering, — her mind was meeting Stephen’s in 
that thought of his, that they might still snatch moments 
of mute confession before the parting came. 

For was not he suffering too ? She saw it daily — saw it in 
the sickened look of fatigue with which, as soon as he was 
not compelled to exert himself, he relapsed into indifference 
toward everything but the possibility of watching her. 
Could she refuse sometimes to answer that beseeching look 
which she felt to be following her like a low murmur of love 
and pain? She refused it less and less, till at last the evening 
for them both was sometimes made of a moment’s mutual 
gaze; they thought of it till it came, and when it had come, 
they thought of nothing else. One other thing Stephen 
seemed now and then to care for, and that was to sing; it 
was a way of speaking to Maggie. Perhaps he was not dis¬ 
tinctly conscious that he was impelled to it by a secret long¬ 
ing — running counter to all his self-confessed resolves — to 


THE GREAT TEMPTATION 


505 

deepen the hold he had on her. Watch your own speech 
and notice how it is guided by your less conscious purposes, 
and you will understand that contradiction in Stephen. 

Philip Wakem was a less frequent visitor, but he came 
occasionally in the evening, and it happened that he was 
there when Lucy said, as they sat out on the lawn, near 
sunset, — 

“ Now Maggie’s tale of visits to aunt Glegg is completed, 
I mean that we shall go out boating every day until she 
goes. She has not had half enough boating because of these 
tiresome visits, and she likes it better than anything. Don’t 
you, Maggie ? ” 

“ Better than any sort of locomotion, I hope you mean,” 
said Philip, smiling at Maggie, who was lolling backward 
in a low garden-chair; “ else she will be selling her soul to 
that ghostly boatman who haunts the Floss, only for the 
sake of being drifted in a boat forever.” 

“ Should you like to be her boatman ? ” said Lucy. “ Be¬ 
cause, if you would, you can come with us and take an 
oar. If the Floss were but a quiet lake instead of a river, we 
should be independent of any gentleman, for Maggie can 
row splendidly. As it is, we are reduced to ask services of 
knights and squires, who do not seem to offer them with 
great alacrity.” 

She looked playful reproach at Stephen, who was saunter¬ 
ing up and down, and was just singing in pianissimo fal¬ 
setto, — 

“ The thirst that from the soul doth rise 
Doth ask a drink divine.” 

He took no notice, but still kept aloof; he had done so fre¬ 
quently during Philip’s recent visits. 

“ You don’t seem inclined for boating,” said Lucy, when 
he came to sit down by her on the bench. “ Doesn’t row¬ 
ing suit you now ? ” 

“ Oh, I hate a large party in a boat,” he said, almost 
irritably. “ I’ll come when you have no one else.” 

Lucy colored, fearing that Philip would be hurt; it was 


506 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


quite a new thing for Stephen to speak in that way; but he 
had certainly not been well of late. Philip colored too, but 
less from a feeling of personal offence than from a vague sus¬ 
picion that Stephen’s moodiness had some relation to Mag¬ 
gie, who had started up from her chair as he spoke, and 
had walked toward the hedge of laurels to look at the de¬ 
scending sunlight on the river. 

“ As Miss Deane didn’t know she was excluding others by 
inviting me,” said Philip, “ I am bound to resign.” 

“ No, indeed, you shall not,” said Lucy, much vexed. “ I 
particularly wish for your company to-morrow. The tide 
will suit at half-past ten; it will be a delicious time for a 
couple of hours to row to Luckreth and walk back, before 
the sun gets too hot. And how can you object to four 
people in a boat?” she added, looking at Stephen. 

“ I don’t object to the people, but the number,” said 
Stephen, who had recovered himself, and was rather ashamed 
of his rudeness. “ If I voted for a fourth at all, of course 
it would be you, Phil. But we won’t divide the pleasure of 
escorting the ladies; we’ll take it alternately. I’ll go the 
next day.” 

This incident had the effect of drawing Philip’s attention 
with freshened solicitude toward Stephen and Maggie; but 
when they re-entered the house, music was proposed, and 
Mrs. Tulliver and Mr. Deane being occupied with cribbage, 
Maggie sat apart near the table where the books and work 
were placed, doing nothing, however, but listening abstract¬ 
edly to the music. Stephen presently turned to a duet 
which he insisted that Lucy and Philip should sing; he had 
often done the same thing before; but this evening Philip 
thought he divined some double intention in every word and 
look of Stephen’s, and watched him keenly, angry with him¬ 
self all the while for this clinging suspicion. For had not 
Maggie virtually denied any ground for his doubts on her 
side? And she was truth itself; it was impossible not to 
believe her word and glance when they had last spoken to¬ 
gether in the garden. Stephen might be strongly fascinated 
by her (what was more natural?), but Philip felt himself 


THE GREAT TEMPTATION 507 

rather base for intruding on what must be his friend’s 
painful secret. 

Still he watched. Stephen, moving away from the piano, 
sauntered slowly toward the table near which Maggie sat, 
and turned over the newspapers, apparently in mere idle¬ 
ness. Then he seated himself with his back to the piano, 
dragging a newspaper under his elbow, and thrusting his 
hand through his hair, as if he had been attracted by some 
bit of local news in the “ Laceham Courier.” He was in 
reality looking at Maggie, who had not taken the slight¬ 
est notice of his approach. She had always additional 
strength of resistance when Philip was present, just as 
we can restrain our speech better in a spot that we feel 
to be hallowed. But at last she heard the word “ dearest ” 
uttered in the softest tone of pained entreaty, like that 
of a patient who asks for something that ought to have 
been given without asking. She had never heard that 
word since the moments in the lane at Basset, when it 
had come from Stephen again and again, almost as in¬ 
voluntarily as if it had been an inarticulate cry. Philip 
could hear no word, but he had moved to the opposite side 
of the piano, and could see Maggie start and blush, raise 
her eyes an instant toward Stephen’s face, but immediately 
look apprehensively toward himself. It was not evident to 
her that Philip had observed her; but a pang of shame, 
under the sense of this concealment, made her move from 
her chair and walk to her mother’s side to watch the game 
at cribbage. 

Philip went home soon after in a state of hideous doubt 
mingled with wretched certainty. It was impossible for 
him now to resist the conviction that there was some mutual 
consciousness between Stephen and Maggie; and for half 
the night his irritable, susceptible nerves were pressed upon 
almost to frenzy by that one wretched fact; he could at¬ 
tempt no explanation that would reconcile it with her words 
and actions. When, at last, the need for belief in Maggie 
rose to its habifual predominance, he was not long in im¬ 
agining the truth, — she was struggling, she was banishing 


508 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


herself; this was the clew to all he had seen since his return. 
But athwart that belief there came other possibilities that 
would not be driven out of sight. His imagination wrought 
out the whole story: Stephen was madly in love with her; 
he must have told her so; she had rejected him, and was 
hurrying away. But would he give her up, knowing — 
Philip felt the fact with heart-crushing despair — that she 
was made half helpless by her feeling toward him? 

When the morning came, Philip was too ill to think of 
keeping his engagement to go in the boat. In his present 
agitation he could decide on nothing; he could only alternate 
between contradictory intentions. First, he thought he must 
have an interview with Maggie, and entreat her to confide 
in him; then, again, he distrusted his own interference. Had 
he not been thrusting himself on Maggie all along? She 
had uttered words long ago in her young ignorance; it was 
enough to make her hate him that these should be con¬ 
tinually present with her as a bond. And had he any right 
to ask her for a revelation of feelings which she had evidently 
intended to withhold from him. He would not trust him¬ 
self to see her, till he had assured himself that he could act 
from pure anxiety for her, and not from egoistic irritation. 
He wrote a brief note to Stephen, and sent it early by the 
servant, saying that he was not well enough to fulfil his en¬ 
gagement to Miss Deane. Would Stephen take his excuse, 
and fill his place? 

Lucy had arranged a charming plan, which had made her 
quite content with Stephen’s refusal to go in the boat. She 
discovered that her father was to drive to Lindum this 
morning at ten; Lindum was the very place she wanted to 
go to, to make purchases, — important purchases, which 
must by no means be put off to another opportunity; and 
aunt Tulliver must go too, because she was concerned in 
some of the purchases. 

“ You will have your row in the boat just the same, you 
know,” she said to Maggie when they went out of the 
breakfast-room and upstairs together; “ Pnilip will be here 
at half-past ten, and it is a delicious morning. Now don’t 


THE GREAT TEMPTATION 


509 


say a word against it, you dear dolorous thing. What is 
the use of my being a fairy godmother, if you set your face 
against all the wonders I work for you? Don’t think of 
awful cousin Tom; you may disobey him a little.” 

Maggie did not persist in objecting. She was almost glad 
of the plan, for perhaps it would bring her some strength 
and calmness to be alone with Philip again; it was like 
revisiting the scene of a quieter life, in which the very 
struggles were repose, compared with the daily tumult of 
the present. She prepared herself for the boat, and at half¬ 
past ten sat waiting in the drawing-room. 

The ring of the door-bell was punctual, and she was think¬ 
ing with half-sad, affectionate pleasure of the surprise Philip 
would have in finding that he was to be with her alone, when 
she distinguished a firm, rapid step across the hall, that was 
certainly not Philip’s; the door opened, and Stephen Guest 
entered. 

In the first moment they were both too much agitated to 
speak; for Stephen had learned from the servant that the 
others were gone out. Maggie had started up and sat down 
again, with her heart beating violently; and Stephen, throw¬ 
ing down his cap and gloves, came and sat by her in silence. 
She thought Philip would be coming soon; and with great 
effort — for she trembled visibly — she rose to go to a dis¬ 
tant chair. 

“ He is not coming,” said Stephen, in a low tone. “ I am 
going in the boat.” 

“ Oh, we can’t go,” said Maggie, sinking into her chair 
again. “ Lucy did not expect — she would be hurt. Why is 
not Philip come ? ” 

“ He is not well; he asked me to come instead.” 

“ Lucy is gone to Lindum,” said Maggie, taking off her 
bonnet with hurried, trembling fingers. “ We must not go.” 

“ Very well,” said Stephen, dreamily, looking at her, as he 
rested his arm on the back of his chair. “ Then we’ll stay 
here.” 

He was looking into her deep, deep eyes, far off and mys¬ 
terious as the starlit blackness, and yet very near, and 


510 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


timidly loving. Maggie sat perfectly still — perhaps for 
moments, perhaps for minutes — until the helpless trem¬ 
bling had ceased, and there was a warm glow on her cheek. 

“ The man is waiting; he has taken the cushions,” she 
said. “ Will you go and tell him? ” 

“ What shall I tell him ? ” said Stephen, almost in a whis¬ 
per. He was looking at the lips now. 

Maggie made no answer. 

“ Let us go,” Stephen murmured entreatingly, rising, and 
taking her hand to raise her too. “ We shall not be long 
together.” 

And they went. Maggie felt that she was being led down 
the garden among the roses, being helped with firm, tender 
care into the boat, having the cushion and cloak arranged 
for her feet, and her parasol opened for her (which she had 
forgotten), all by this stronger presence that seemed to bear 
her along without any act of her own will, like the added self 
which comes with the sudden exalting influence of a strong 
tonic, and she felt nothing else. Memory was excluded. 

They glided rapidly along, Stephen rowing, helped by the 
backward-flowing tide, past the Tofton trees and houses; 
on between the silent sunny fields and pastures, which 
seemed filled with a natural joy that had no reproach for 
theirs. The breath of the young, unwearied day, the de¬ 
licious rhythmic dip of the oars, the fragmentary song of a 
passing bird heard now and then, as if it were only the over¬ 
flowing of brimful gladness, the sweet solitude of a twofold 
consciousness that was mingled into one by that grave, un¬ 
tiring gaze which need not be averted, — what else could 
there be in their minds for the first hour? Some low, sub¬ 
dued, languid exclamation of love came from Stephen from 
time to time, as he went on rowing idly, half automatically; 
otherwise they spoke no word; for what could words have 
been but an inlet to thought? and thought did not belong 
to that enchanted haze in which they were enveloped, — it 
belonged to the past and the future that lay outside the 
haze. Maggie was only dimly conscious of the banks, as 
they passed them, and dwelt with no recognition on the vil- 


THE GREAT TEMPTATION 511 

lages; she knew there were several to be passed before they 
reached Luckreth, where they always stopped and left the 
boat. At all times she was so liable to fits of absence, that 
she was likely enough to let her waymarks pass unnoticed. 

But at last Stephen, who had been rowing more and more 
idly, ceased to row, laid down the oars, folded his arms, and 
looked down on the water as if watching the pace at which 
the boat glided without his help. This sudden change roused 
Maggie. She looked at the far-stretching fields, at the banks 
close by, and felt that they were entirely strange to her. A 
terrible alarm took possession of her. 

“ Oh, have we passed Luckreth, where we were to stop ? ” 
she exclaimed, looking back to see if the place were out of 
sight. No village was to be seen. She turned around again, 
with a look of distressed questioning at Stephen. 

He went on watching the water, and said, in a strange, 
dreamy, absent tone, “ Yes, a long way.” 

“ Oh, what shall I do? ” cried Maggie, in an agony. “ We 
shall not get home for hours, and Lucy, — 0 God, help 
me! ” 

She clasped her hands and broke into a sob, like a fright¬ 
ened child; she thought of nothing but of meeting Lucy, 
and seeing her look of pained surprise and doubt, perhaps 
of just upbraiding. 

Stephen moved and sat near her, and gently drew down 
the clasped hands. 

“ Maggie,” he said, in a deep tone of slow decision, “ let 
us never go home again, till no one can part us, — till we 
are married.” 

The unusual tone, the startling words, arrested Maggie’s 
sob, and she sat quite still, wondering; as if Stephen might 
have seen some possibilities that would alter everything, and 
annul the wretched facts. 

“ See, Maggie, how everything has come without our seek¬ 
ing, — in spite of all our efforts. We never thought of being 
alone together again; it has all been done by others. See 
how the tide is carrying us out, away from all those un¬ 
natural bonds that we have been trying to make faster 


512 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


round us, and trying in vain. It will carry us on to Torby, 
and we can land there, and get some carriage, and hurry on 
to York and then to Scotland, — and never pause a moment 
till we are bound to each other, so that only death can part 
us. It is the only right thing, dearest; it is the only way of 
escaping from this wretched entanglement. Everything has 
concurred to point it out to us. We have contrived nothing, 
we have thought of nothing ourselves.” 

Stephen spoke with deep, earnest pleading. Maggie 
listened, passing from her startled wonderment to the yearn¬ 
ing after that belief that the tide was doing it all, that she 
might glide along with the swift, silent stream, and not 
struggle any more. But across that stealing influence came 
the terrible shadow of past thoughts; and the sudden horror 
lest now, at last, the moment of fatal intoxication was close 
upon her, called up feelings of angry resistance toward 
Stephen. 

“ Let me go! ” she said, in an agitated tone, flashing an 
indignant look at him, and trying to get her hands free. 
“ You have wanted to deprive me of any choice. You knew 
we were come too far; you have dared to take advantage 
of my thoughtlessness. It is unmanly to bring me into such 
a position.” 

Stung by this reproach, he released her hands, moved back 
to his former place, and folded his arms, in a sort of des¬ 
peration at the difficulty Maggie’s words had made present 
to him. If she would not consent to go on, he must curse 
himself for the embarrassment he had led her into. But the 
reproach was the unendurable thing; the one thing worse 
than parting with her was, that she should feel he had acted 
unworthily toward her. At last he said, in a tone of sup¬ 
pressed rage,— 

“ I didn’t notice that we had passed Luckreth till we had 
got to the next village; and then it came into my mind that 
we would go on. I can’t justify it; I ought to have told 
you. It is enough to make you hate me, since you don’t 
love me well enough to make everything else indifferent to 
you, as I do you. Shall I stop the boat and try to get you 


THE GREAT TEMPTATION 


513 


out here ? Ill tell Lucy that I was mad, and that you hate 
me; and you shall be clear of me forever. No one can 
blame you, because I have behaved unpardonably to you.” 

Maggie was paralyzed; it was easier to resist Stephen’s 
pleading than this picture he had called up of himself suffer¬ 
ing while she was vindicated; easier even to turn away from 
his look of tenderness than from this look of angry misery, 
that seemed to place her in selfish isolation from him. He 
had called up a state of feeling in which the reasons which 
had acted on her conscience seemed to be transmitted into 
mere self-regard. The indignant fire in her eyes was 
quenched, and she began to look at him with timid distress. 
She had reproached him for being hurried into irrevocable 
trespass, — she, who had been so weak herself. 

“ As if I shouldn’t feel what happened to you — just the 
same,” she said, with reproach of another kind, — the re¬ 
proach of love, asking for more trust. This yielding to the 
idea of Stephen’s suffering was more fatal than the other 
yielding, because it was less distinguishable from that sense 
of others’ claims which was the moral basis of her resistance. 

He felt all the relenting in her look and tone; it was 
heaven opening again. He moved to her side, and took her 
hand, leaning his elbow on the back of the boat, and saying 
nothing. He dreaded to utter another word, he dreaded to 
make another movement, that might provoke another re¬ 
proach or denial from her. Life hung on her consent; every¬ 
thing else was hopeless, confused, sickening misery. They 
glided along in this way, both resting in that silence as in 
a haven, both dreading lest their feelings should be divided 
again, — till they became aware that the clouds had 
gathered, and that the slightest perceptible freshening of the 
breeze was growing and growing, so that the whole char¬ 
acter of the day was altered. 

“ You will be chill, Maggie, in this thin dress. Let me 
raise the cloak over your shoulders. Get up an instant, 
dearest.” 

Maggie obeyed; there was an unspeakable charm in being 
told what to do, and having everything decided for her. She 


514 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


sat down again covered with the cloak, and Stephen took 
to his oars again, making haste; for they must try to get 
to Torby as fast as they could. Maggie was hardly con¬ 
scious of having said or done anything decisive. All yield¬ 
ing is attended with a less vivid consciousness than resist¬ 
ance; it is the partial sleep of thought; it is the submergence 
of our own personality by another. Every influence tended 
to lull her into acquiescence. That dreamy gliding in the 
boat which had lasted for four hours, and had brought 
some weariness and exhaustion; the recoil of her fatigued 
sensations from the impracticable difficulty of getting out 
of the boat at this unknown distance from home, and walk¬ 
ing for long miles, — all helped to bring her into more com¬ 
plete subjection to that strong, mysterious charm which 
made a last parting from Stephen seem the death of all joy, 
and made the thought of wounding him like the first touch 
of the torturing iron before which resolution shrank. And 
then there was the present happiness of being with him, 
which was enough to absorb all her languid energy. 

Presently Stephen observed a vessel coming after them. 
Several vessels, among them the steamer to Mudport, had 
passed them with the early tide, but for the last hour they 
had seen none. He looked more and more eagerly at this 
vessel, as if a new thought had come into his mind along 
with it, and then he looked at Maggie hesitatingly. 

“ Maggie, dearest,” he said at last, “ if this vessel should 
be going to Mudport, or to any convenient place on the 
coast northward, it would be our best plan to get them to 
take us on board. You are fatigued, and it may soon rain; 
it may be a wretched business, getting to Torby in this boat. 
IPs only a trading vessel, but I dare say you can be made 
tolerably comfortable. We’ll take the cushions out of the 
boat. It is really our best plan. They’ll be glad enough to 
take us. I’ve got plenty of money about me. I can pay 
them well.” 

Maggie’s heart began to beat with reawakened alarm at 
this new proposition; but she was silent, — one course 
seemed as difficult as another. 


THE GREAT TEMPTATION 


515 


Stephen hailed the vessel. It was a Dutch vessel going 
to Mudport, the English mate informed him, and, if this 
wind held, would be there in less than two days. 

“We had got out too far with our boat,” said Stephen. 
“ I was trying to make for Torby. But I’m afraid of the 
weather; and this lady — my wife — will be exhausted with 
fatigue and hunger. Take us on board — will you? — and 
haul up the boat. I’ll pay you well.” 

Maggie, now really faint and trembling with fear, was 
taken on board, making an interesting object of contempla¬ 
tion to admiring Dutchmen. The mate feared the lady 
would have a poor time of it on board, for they had no ac¬ 
commodation for such entirely unlooked-for passengers,— 
no private cabin larger than an old-fashioned church-pew. 
But at least they had Dutch cleanliness, which makes all 
other inconveniences tolerable; and the boat cushions were 
spread into a couch for Maggie on the poop with all 
alacrity. 

But to pace up and down the deck leaning on Stephen 
— being upheld by his strength — was the first change that 
she needed; then came food, and then quiet reclining on the 
cushions, with the sense that no new resolution could be 
taken that day. Everything must wait till to-morrow. Ste¬ 
phen sat beside her with her hand in his; they could only 
speak to each other in low tones; only look at each other 
now and then, for it would take a long while to dull the 
curiosity of the five men on board, and reduce these hand¬ 
some young strangers to that minor degree of interest which 
belongs, in a sailor’s regard, to all objects nearer than the 
horizon. But Stephen was triumphantly happy. Every 
other thought or care was thrown into unmarked perspec¬ 
tive by the certainty that Maggie must be his. The leap 
had been taken now; he had been tortured by scruples, he 
had fought fiercely with over-mastering inclination, he had 
hesitated; but repentance was impossible. He murmured 
forth in fragmentary sentences his happiness, his adoration, 
his tenderness, his belief that their life together must be 
heaven, that her presence with him would give rapture to 


516 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


every common day; that to satisfy her lightest wish was 
dearer to him than all other bliss; that everything was easy 
for her sake, except to part with her; and now they never 
would part; he would belong to her forever, and all that 
was his was hers, — had no value for him except as it was 
hers. Such things, uttered in low, broken tones by the one 
voice that has first stirred the fibre of young passion, have 
only a feeble effect — on experienced minds at a distance 
from them. To poor Maggie they were very near; they 
were like nectar held close to thirsty lips; there was, there 
must be, then, a life for mortals here below which was not 
hard and chill, — in which affection would no longer be self- 
sacrifice. Stephen’s passionate words made the vision of 
such a life more fully present to her than it had ever been 
before; and the vision for the time excluded all realities,— 
all except the returning sun-gleams which broke out on 
the waters as the evening approached, and’ mingled with the 
visionary sunlight of promised happiness; all except the 
hand that pressed hers, and the voice that spoke to her, and 
the eyes that looked at her with grave, unspeakable love. 

There was to be no rain, after all; the clouds rolled off 
to the horizon again, making the great purple rampart and 
long purple isles of that wondrous land which reveals itself 
to us when the sun goes down, — the land that the evening 
star watches over. Maggie was to sleep all night on the 
poop; it was better than going below; and she was covered 
with the warmest wrappings the ship could furnish. It was 
still early, when the fatigues of the day brought on a 
drowsy longing for perfect rest, and she laid down her head, 
looking at the faint, dying flush in the west, where the one 
golden lamp was getting brighter and brighter. Then she 
looked up at Stephen, who was still seated by her, hanging 
over her as he leaned his arm against the vessel’s side. Be¬ 
hind all the delicious visions of these last hours, which had 
flowed over her like a soft stream, and made her entirely 
passive, there was the dim consciousness that the condition 
was a transient one, and that the morrow must bring back 
the old life of struggle; that there were thoughts which 


THE GREAT TEMPTATION 517 

would presently avenge themselves for this oblivion. But 
now nothing was distinct to her; she was being lulled to 
sleep with that soft stream still flowing over her, with those 
delicious visions melting and fading like the wondrous aerial 
land of the west. 



CHAPTER XIV 


WAKING 

W HEN Maggie was gone to sleep, Stephen, weary too 
with his unaccustomed amount of rowing, and with 
the intense inward life of the last twelve hours, but too rest¬ 
less to sleep, walked and lounged about the deck with his 
cigar far on into midnight, not seeing the dark water, hardly 
conscious there were stars, living only in the near and dis¬ 
tant future. At last fatigue conquered restlessness, and he 
rolled himself up in a piece of tarpaulin on the deck near 
Maggie’s feet. 

She had fallen asleep before nine, and had been sleeping 
for six hours before the faintest hint of a midsummer day¬ 
break was discernible. She awoke from that vivid dream¬ 
ing which makes the margin of our deeper rest. She was in 













518 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


a boat on the wide water with Stephen, and in the gathering 
darkness something like a star appeared, that grew and grew 
till they saw it was the Virgin seated in St. Ogg’s boat, and 
it came nearer and nearer, till they saw the Virgin was Lucy 
and the boatman was Philip, — no, not Philip, but her 
brother, who rowed past without looking at her; and she 
rose to stretch out her arms and call to him, and their own 
boat turned over with the movement, and they began to 
sink, till with one spasm of dread she seemed to awake, and 
find she was a child again in the parlor at evening twilight, 
and Tom was not really angry. From the soothed sense of 
that false waking she passed to the real waking, — to the 
plash of water against the vessel, and the sound of a foot¬ 
step on the deck, and the awful starlit sky. There was a 
moment of utter bewilderment before her mind could get 
disentangled from the confused web of dreams; but soon the 
whole terrible truth urged itself upon her. Stephen was not 
by her now; she was alone with her own memory and her 
own dread. The irrevocable wrong that must blot her life 
had been committed; she had brought sorrow into the lives 
of others, — into the lives that were knit up with hers by 
trust and love. The feeling of a few short weeks had hur¬ 
ried her into the sins her nature had most recoiled from, — 
breach of faith and cruel selfishness; she had rent the ties 
that had given meaning to duty, and had made herself an 
outlawed soul, with no guide but the wayward choice of her 
own passion. 

And where would that lead her? Where had it led 
her now? She had said she would rather die than fall 
into that temptation. She felt it now, — now that the 
consequences of such a fall had come before the outward act 
was completed. There was at least this fruit from all her 
years of striving after the highest and best, — that her soul, 
though betrayed, beguiled, ensnared, could never deliberately 
consent to a choice of the lower. And a choice of what ? 0 
God! not a choice of joy, but of conscious cruelty and hard¬ 
ness; for could she ever cease to see before her Lucy and 
Philip, with their murdered trust and hopes ? Her life with 


THE GREAT TEMPTATION 


510 

Stephen could have no sacredness; she must forever sink 
and wander vaguely, driven by uncertain impulse; for she 
had let go the clew of life, — that clew which once in the far- 
off years her young need had clutched so strongly. She had 
renounced all delights then, before she knew them, before 
they had come within her reach. Philip had been right when 
he told her that she knew nothing of renunciation; she had 
thought it was quiet ecstasy; she saw it face to face now, — 
that sad, patient, loving strength which holds the clew of 
life, — and saw that the thorns were forever pressing on its 
brow. The yesterday, which could never be revoked, — if 
she could have changed it now for any length of inward si¬ 
lent endurance, she would have bowed beneath that cross 
with a sense of rest. 

Daybreak came and the reddening eastern light, while 
her past life was grasping her in this way, with that tight¬ 
ening clutch which comes in the last moments of possible 
rescue. She could see Stephen now lying on the deck still 
fast asleep, and with the sight of him there came a wave of 
anguish that found its way in a long-suppressed sob. The 
worst bitterness of parting — the thought that urged the 
sharpest inward cry for help — was the pain it must give to 
him. But surmounting everything was the horror at her 
own possible failure, the dread lest her conscience should 
be benumbed again, and not rise to energy till it was too 
late. Too late! it was too late already not to have caused 
misery; too late for everything, perhaps, but to rush away 
from the last act of baseness, — the tasting of joys that were 
wrung from crushed hearts. 

The sun was rising now, and Maggie started up with the 
sense that a day of resistance was beginning for her. Her 
eyelashes were still wet with tears, as, with her shawl over 
her head, she sat looking at the slowly rounding sun. Some¬ 
thing roused Stephen too, and getting up from his hard bed, 
he came to sit beside her. The sharp instinct of anxious love 
saw something to give him alarm in the very first glance. 
He had a hovering dread of some resistance in Maggie’s 
nature that he would be unable to overcome. He had the 


520 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


uneasy consciousness that he had robbed her of perfect free¬ 
dom yesterday; there was too much native honor in him, 
for him not to feel that, if her will should recoil, his con¬ 
duct would have been odious, and she would have a right 
to reproach him. 

But Maggie did not feel that right; she was too con¬ 
scious of fatal weakness in herself, too full of the tender¬ 
ness that comes with the foreseen need for inflicting a wound. 
She let him take her hand when he came to sit down beside 
her, and smiled at him, only with rather a sad glance; she 
could say nothing to pain him till the moment of possible 
parting was nearer. And so they drank their cup of coffee 
together, and walked about the deck, and heard the cap¬ 
tain’s assurance that they should be in at Mudport by five 
o’clock, each with an inward burthen; but in him it was 
an undefined fear, which he trusted to the coming hours to 
dissipate; in her it was a definite resolve on which she was 
trying silently to tighten her hold. Stephen was continu¬ 
ally, through the morning, expressing his anxiety at the 
fatigue and discomfort she was suffering, and alluded to 
landing and to the change of motion and repose she would 
have in a carriage, wanting to assure himself more com¬ 
pletely by presupposing that everything would be as he had 
arranged it. For a long while Maggie contented herself with 
assuring him that she had had a good night’s rest, and that 
she didn’t mind about being on the vessel, — it was not 
like being on the open sea, it was only a little less pleasant 
than being in a boat on the Floss. But a suppressed resolve 
will betray itself in the eyes, and Stephen became more and 
more uneasy as the day advanced, under the sense that 
Maggie had entirely lost her passiveness. He longed, but 
did not dare, to speak of their marriage, of where they would 
go after it, and the steps he would take to inform his father, 
and the rest, of what had happened. He longed to assure 
himself of a tacit assent from her. But each time he looked 
at her, he gathered a stronger dread of the new, quiet sad¬ 
ness with which she met his eyes. And they were more 
and more silent. 


THE GREAT TEMPTATION 


521 


“ Here we are in sight of Mudport,” he said at last. 
“ Now, dearest,” he added, turning toward her with a look 
that was half beseeching, “ the worst part of your fatigue 
is over. On the land we can command swiftness. In an¬ 
other hour and a half we shall be in a chaise together, and 
that will seem rest to you after this.” 

Maggie felt it was time to speak; it would only be un¬ 
kind now to assent by silence. She spoke in the lowest tone, 
as he had done, but with distinct decision. 

“ We shall not be together; we shall have parted.” 

The blood rushed to Stephen’s face. 

“ We shall not,” he said. “ I’ll die first.” 

It was as he had dreaded — there was a struggle coming. 
But neither of them dared to say another word till the 
boat was let down, and they were taken to the landing- 
place. Here there was a cluster of gazers and passengers 
awaiting the departure of the steamboat to St. Ogg’s. Mag¬ 
gie had a dim sense, when she had landed, and Stephen was 
hurrying her along on his arm, that some one had advanced 
toward her from that cluster as if he were coming to speak 
to her. But she was hurried along, and was indifferent to 
everything but the coming trial. 

A porter guided them to the nearest inn and posting- 
house, and Stephen gave the order for the chaise as they 
passed through the yard. Maggie took no notice of this, 
and only said, “ Ask them to show us into a room where 
we can sit down.” 

When they entered, Maggie did not sit down, and 
Stephen, whose face had a desperate determination in 
it, was about to ring the bell, when she said, in a firm 
voice, — 

“I’m not going; we must part here.” 

“ Maggie,” he said, turning round toward her, and speak¬ 
ing in the tones of a man who feels a process of torture be¬ 
ginning, “ do you mean to kill me ? What is the use of it 
now? The whole thing is done.” 

“ No, it is not done,” said Maggie. “ Too much is done, — 
more than we can ever remove the trace of. But I will go 


522 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


no farther. Don’t try to prevail with me again. I couldn’t 
choose yesterday.” 

What was he to do? He dared not go near her; her 
anger might leap out, and make a new barrier. He walked 
backward and forward in maddening perplexity. 

“ Maggie,” he said at last, pausing before her, and speak¬ 
ing in a tone of imploring wretchedness, “ have some pity — 
hear me — forgive me for what I did yesterday. I will obey 
you now; I will do nothing without your full consent. But 
don’t blight our lives forever by a rash perversity that can 
answer no good purpose to any one, that can only create 
new evils. Sit down, dearest; wait — think what you are 
going to do. Don’t treat me as if you couldn’t trust me.” 

He had chosen the most effective appeal; but Maggie’s 
will was fixed unswervingly on the coming wrench. She had » 
made up her mind to suffer. 

“ We must not wait,” she said, in a low but distinct voice; 

“ we must part at once.” 

“ We can’t part, Maggie,” said Stephen, more impetuously. 

“ I can’t bear it. What is the use of inflicting that misery 
on me ? The blow — whatever it may have been — has been 
struck now. Will it help any one else that you should drive 
me mad ? ” 

“ I will not begin any future, even for you,” said Maggie, 
tremulously, “ with a deliberate consent to what ought not 
to have been. What I told you at Basset I feel now; I 
would rather have died than fall into this temptation. It 
would have been better if we had parted forever then. But 
we must part now.” 

“ We will not part,” Stephen burst out, instinctively 
placing his back against the door, forgetting everything he 
had said a few moments before; “I will not endure it. 
You’ll make me desperate; I sha’n’t know what I do.” 

Maggie trembled. She felt that the parting could not be 
effected suddenly. She must rely on a slower appeal to 
Stephen’s better self; she must be prepared for a harder task 
than that of rushing away while resolution was fresh. She 
sat down. Stephen, watching her with that look of despera- 


THE GREAT TEMPTATION 


523 


tion which had come over him like a lurid light, approached 
slowly from the door, seated himself close beside her, and 
grasped her hand. Her heart beat like the heart of a 
frightened bird; but this direct opposition helped her. She 
felt her determination growing stronger. 

“ Remember what you felt weeks ago,” she began, with 
beseeching earnestness; “remember what we both felt,— 
that we owed ourselves to others, and must conquer every 
inclination which could make us false to that debt. We 
have failed to keep our resolutions; but the wrong remains 
the same.” 

“ No, it does not remain the same,” said Stephen. “ We 
have proved that it was impossible to keep our resolutions. 
We have proved that the feeling which draws us toward 
each other is too strong to be overcome. That natural law 
surmounts every other; we can’t help what it clashes with.” 

“ It is not so, Stephen; I’m quite sure that is wrong. I 
have tried to think it again and again; but I see, if we judged 
in that way, there would be a warrant for all treachery 
and cruelty; we should justify breaking the most sacred ties 
that can ever be formed on earth. If the past is not to bind 
us, where can duty lie? We should have no law but the 
inclination of the moment.” 

“ But there are ties that can’t be kept by mere resolu¬ 
tion,” said Stephen, starting up and walking about again. 
“ What is outward faithfulness? Would they have thanked 
us for anything so hollow as constancy without love ? ” 

Maggie did not answer immediately. She was undergo¬ 
ing an inward as well as an outward contest. At last she 
said, with a passionate assertion of her conviction, as much 
against herself as against him, — 

“That seems right — at first; but when I look further, 
I’m sure it is not right. Faithfulness and constancy mean 
something else besides doing what is easiest and pleasantest 
to ourselves. They mean renouncing whatever is opposed to 
the reliance others have in us, — whatever would cause 
misery to those whom the course of our lives has made de¬ 
pendent on us. If we — if I had been better, nobler, those 


524 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


claims would have been so strongly present with me, — I 
should have felt them pressing on my heart so continually, 
just as they do now in the moments when my conscience 
is awake, — that the opposite feeling would never have 
grown in me, as it has done; it would have been quenched at 
once, I should have prayed for help so earnestly, I should 
have rushed away as we rush from hideous danger. I feel 
no excuse for myself, none. I should never have failed 
toward Lucy and Philip as I have done, if I had not been 
weak, selfish, and hard, — able to think of their pain without 
a pain to myself that would have destroyed all temptation. 
Oh, what is Lucy feeling now? She believed in me — she 
loved me — she was so good to me. Think of her-” 

Maggie’s voice was getting choked as she uttered these 
last words. 

“ I can’t think of her,” said Stephen, stamping as if with 
pain. “ I can think of nothing but you, Maggie. You de¬ 
mand of a man what is impossible. I felt that once; but I 
can’t go back to it now. And where is the use of your 
thinking of it, except to torture me? You can’t save them 
from pain now; you can only tear yourself from me, and 
make my life worthless to me. And even if we could go 
back, and both fulfil our engagements, — if that were pos¬ 
sible now, — it would be hateful, horrible, to think of your 
ever being Philip’s wife, — of your ever being the wife of a 
man you didn’t love. We have both been rescued from a 
mistake.” 

A deep flush came over Maggie’s face, and she couldn’t 
speak. Stephen saw this. He sat down again, taking her 
hand in his, and looking at her with passionate entreaty. 

“Maggie! Dearest! If you love me, you are mine. Who 
can have so great a claim on you as I have? My life 
is bound up in your love. There is nothing in the past 
that can annul our right to each other; it is the first 
time we have either of us loved with our whole heart and 
soul.” 

Maggie was still silent for a little while, looking down. 
Stephen was in a flutter of new hope; he was going to tri- 



THE GREAT TEMPTATION 


525 


umph. But she raised her eyes and met his with a glance 
that was filled with the anguish of regret, not with yielding. 

“ No, not with my whole heart and soul, Stephen,” she 
said with timid resolution. I have never consented to it 
with my whole mind. There are memories, and affections, 
and longings after perfect goodness, that have such a strong 
hold on me; they would never quit me for long; they would 
come back and be pain to me — repentance. I coqldn’t live 
in peace if I put the shadow of a wilful sin between myself 
and God. I have caused sorrow already — I know — I feel 
it; but I have never deliberately consented to it; I have 
never said, ‘ They shall suffer, that I may have joy/ It has 
never been my will to marry you; if you were to win con¬ 
sent from the momentary triumph of my feeling for you, 
you would not have my whole soul. If I could wake back 
again into the time before yesterday, I w r ould choose to be 
true to my calmer affections, and live without the joy of 
love.” 

Stephen loosed her hand, and rising impatiently, walked 
up and down the room in suppressed rage. 

“ Good God! ” he burst out at last, “ what a miserable 
thing a woman’s love is to a man’s! I could commit crimes 
for you, — and you can balance and choose in that way. 
But you don’t love me; if you had a tithe of the feeling for 
me that I have for you, it would be impossible to you to 
think for a moment of sacrificing me. But it weighs noth¬ 
ing with you that you are robbing me of my life’s happiness.” 

Maggie pressed her fingers together almost convulsively 
as she held them clasped on her lap. A great terror was 
upon her, as if she were ever and anon seeing where she 
stood by great flashes of lightning, and then again stretched 
forth her hands in the darkness. 

“ No, I don’t sacrifice you — I couldn’t sacrifice you,” she 
said, as soon as she could speak again; “but I can’t be¬ 
lieve in a good for you, that I feel, that we both feel, is a 
wrong toward others. We can’t choose happiness either for 
ourselves or for another; we can’t tell where that will lie. 
We can only choose whether we will indulge ourselves in the 


526 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


present moment, or whether we will renounce that, for the 
sake of obeying the divine voice within us, — for the sake 
of being true to all the motives that sanctify our lives. I 
know this belief is hard; it has slipped away from me again 
and again; but I have felt that if I let it go forever, I should 
have no light through the darkness of this life.” 

“ But, Maggie,” said Stephen, seating himself by her 
again, “ i§ it possible you don’t see that what happened yes¬ 
terday has altered the whole position of things? What in¬ 
fatuation is it, what obstinate prepossession, that blinds you 
to that? It is too late to say what we might have done or 
what we ought to have done. Admitting the very worst 
view of what has been done, it is a fact we must act on 
now; our position is altered; the right course is no longer 
what it was before. We must accept our own actions and 
start afresh from them. Suppose we had been married yes¬ 
terday? It is nearly the same thing. The effect on others 
would not have been different. It would only have made 
this difference to ourselves,” Stephen added bitterly, “ that 
you might have acknowledged then that your tie to me was 
stronger than to others.” 

Again a deep flush came over Maggie’s face, and she was 
silent. Stephen thought again that he was beginning to pre¬ 
vail, — he had never yet believed that he should not pre¬ 
vail; there are possibilities which our minds shrink from 
too completely for us to fear them. 

“ Dearest,” he said, in his deepest, tenderest tone, leaning 
toward her, and putting his arm round her, “ you are mine 
now, — the world believes it; duty must spring out of that 
now. In a few hours you will be legally mine, and those 
who had claims on us will submit, — they will see that there 
was a force which declared against their claims.” 

Maggie’s eyes opened wide in one terrified look at the 
face that was close to hers, and she started up, pale again. 

“ Oh, I can’t do it,” she said, in a voice almost of agony; 
“ Stephen, don’t ask me — don’t urge me. I can’t argue 
any longer, — I don’t know what is wise; but my heart will 
not let me do it. I see, — I feel their trouble now; it is as 
if it were branded on my mind. I have suffered, and had 


THE GREAT TEMPTATION 


527 


no one to pity me; and now I have made others suffer. It 
would never leave me; it would embitter your love to me. 
I do care for Philip — in a different way; I remember all 
we said to each other; I know how he thought of me as the 
one promise of his life. He was given to me that I might 
make his lot less hard; and I have forsaken him. And 
Lucy, — she has been deceived, — she who trusted me more 
than any one. I cannot marry you; I cannot take a good for 
myself that has been wrung out of their misery. It is not 
the force that ought to rule us, — this that we feel for 
each other; it would rend me away from all that my past 
life has made dear and holy to me. I can’t set out on a 
fresh life, and forget that; I must go back to it, and cling to 
it, else I shall feel as if there were nothing firm beneath my 
feet.” 

“ Good God, Maggie! ” said Stephen, rising too and grasp¬ 
ing her arm, “you rave. How can you go back without 
marrying me? You don’t know what will be said, dearest. 
You see nothing as it really is.” 

“ Yes, I do. But they will believe me. I will confess 
everything. Lucy will believe me — she will forgive you, 
and — and — oh, some good will come by clinging to the 
right. Dear, dear Stephen, let me go! — don’t drag me into 
deeper remorse. My whole soul has never consented; it 
does not consent now.” 

Stephen let go her arm, and sank back on his chair, half- 
stunned by despairing rage. He was silent a few moments, 
not looking at her; while her eyes were turned toward him 
yearningly, in alarm at this sudden change. At last he said, 
still without looking at her, — 

“Go, then, — leave me; don’t torture me any longer,— 
I can’t bear it.” 

Involuntarily she leaned toward him and put out her 
hand to touch his. But he shrank from it as if it had been 
burning iron, and said again, — 

“ Leave me.” 

Maggie was not conscious of a decision as she turned 
away from that gloomy averted face, and walked out of the 
room; it was like an automatic action that fulfils a forgotten 


528 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


intention. What came after? A sense of stairs descended 
as if in a dream, of flagstones, of a chaise and horses stand¬ 
ing, then a street, and a turning into another street where a 
stage-coach was standing, taking in passengers, and the 
darting thought that that coach would take her away, per¬ 
haps toward home. But she could ask nothing yet; she 
only got into the coach. 

Home — where her mother and brother were, Philip, 
Lucy, the scene of her very cares and trials — was the 
haven toward which her mind tended; the sanctuary where 
sacred relics lay, where she would be rescued from more 
falling. The thought of Stephen was like a horrible throb¬ 
bing pain, which yet, as such pains do, seemed to urge all 
other thoughts into activity. But among her thoughts, 
what others would say and think of her conduct was hardly 
present. Love and deep pity and remorseful anguish left 
no room for that. 

The coach was taking her to York, farther away from 
home; but she did not learn that until she was set down in 
the old city at midnight. It was no matter; she could sleep 
there, and start home the next day. She had her purse in 
her pocket, with all her money in it, — a bank-note and a 
sovereign; she had kept it in her pocket from forgetfulness, 
after going out to make purchases the day before yesterday. 

Did she lie down in the gloomy bedroom of the old inn 
that night with her will bent unwaveringly on the path of 
penitent sacrifice? The great struggles of life are not so 
easy as that; the great problems of life are not so clear. In 
the darkness of that night she saw Stephen’s face turned 
toward her in passionate, reproachful misery; she lived 
through again all the tremulous delights of his presence with 
her that made existence an easy floating in a stream of joy, 
instead of a quiet resolved endurance and effort. The love 
she had renounced came back upon her with a cruel charm; 
she felt herself opening her arms to receive it once more; 
and then it seemed to slip away and fade and vanish, leav¬ 
ing only the dying sound of a deep, thrilling voice that said, 
“ Gone, forever gone.” 



BOOK VII—THE FINAL RESCUE 


CHAPTER I 

THE RETURN TO THE MILL 

B ETWEEN four and five o’clock on the afternoon of the 
fifth day from that on which Stephen and Maggie had 
left St. Ogg’s, Tom Tulliver was standing on the gravel 
walk outside the old house at Dorlcote Mill. He was mas¬ 
ter there now; he had half fulfilled his father’s dying wish, 
and by years of steady self-government and energetic work 
he had brought himself near to the attainment of more 
than the old respectability which had been the proud in¬ 
heritance of the Dodsons and Tullivers. 

But Tom’s face, as he stood in the hot, still sunshine of 
that summer afternoon, had no gladness, no triumph in it. 
His mouth wore its bitterest expression, his severe brow its 
hardest and deepest fold, as he drew down his hat farther 
over his eyes to shelter them from the sun, and thrusting 
his hands deep into his pockets, began to walk up and down 
the gravel. No news of his sister had been heard since Bob 
Jakin had come back in the steamer from Mudport, and put 
529 



530 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


an end to all improbable suppositions of an accident on the 
water by stating that he had seen her land from a vessel 
with Mr. Stephen Guest. Would the next news be that she 
was married, — or what ? Probably that she was not mar¬ 
ried; Tom’s mind was set to the expectation of the worst 
that could happen, — not death, but disgrace. 

As he was walking with his back toward the entrance gate, 
and his face toward the rushing mill-stream, a tall, dark¬ 
eyed figure, that we know well, approached the gate, and 
paused to look at him with a fast-beating heart. Her 
brother was the human being of whom she had been most 
afraid from her childhood upward; afraid with that fear 
which springs in us when we love one who is inexorable, un¬ 
bending, unmodifiable, with a mind that we can never 
mould ourselves upon, and yet that we cannot endure to 
alienate from us. That deep-rooted fear was shaking 
Maggie now; but her mind was unswervingly bent on re¬ 
turning to her brother, as the natural refuge that had been 
given her. In her deep humiliation under the retrospect 
of her own weakness, — in her anguish at the injury she 
had inflicted, — she almost desired to endure the severity 
of Tom’s reproof, to submit in patient silence to that harsh, 
disapproving judgment against which she had so often 
rebelled; it seemed no more than just to her now — who 
was weaker than she was? She craved that outward help 
to her better purpose which would come from complete, sub¬ 
missive confession; from being in the presence of those 
whose looks and words would be a reflection of her own 
conscience. 

Maggie had been kept on her bed at York for a day with 
that prostrating headache which was likely to follow on the 
terrible strain of the previous day and night. There was 
an expression of physical pain still about her brow and eyes, 
and her whole appearance, with her dress so long unchanged, 
was worn and distressed. She lifted the latch of the gate 
and walked in slowly. Tom did not hear the gate; he was 
just then close upon the roaring dam; but he presently 
turned, and lifting up his eyes, saw the figure whose worn 


THE FINAL RESCUE 


531 


look and loneliness seemed to him a confirmation of his worst 
conjectures. He paused, trembling and white with disgust 
and indignation. 

Maggie paused too, three yards before him. She felt the 
hatred in his face, felt it rushing through her fibres; but she 
must speak. 

“ Tom,” she began faintly, “ I am come back to you, — I 
am come back home — for refuge — to tell you everything.” 

“ You will find no home with me,” he answered, with 
tremulous rage. “ You have disgraced us all. You have 
disgraced my father’s name. You have been a curse to your 
best friends. You have been base, deceitful; no motives are 
strong enough to restrain you. I wash my hands of you 
forever. You don’t belong to me.” 

Their mother had come to the door now. She stood 
paralyzed by the double shock of seeing Maggie and hear¬ 
ing Tom’s words. 

“ Tom,” said Maggie, with more courage, “ I am perhaps 
not so guilty as you believe me to be. I never meant to 
give way to my feelings. I struggled against them. I was 
carried too far in the boat to come back on Tuesday. I 
came back as soon as I could.” 

“ I can’t believe in you any more,” said Tom, gradually 
passing from the tremulous excitement of the first moment 
to cold inflexibility. “You have been carrying on a clan¬ 
destine relation with Stephen Guest, — as you did before 
with another. He went to see you at my aunt Moss’s; you 
walked alone with him in the lanes; you must have behaved 
as no modest girl would have done to her cousin’s lover, else 
that could never have happened. The people at Luckreth 
saw you pass; you passed all the other places; you knew 
what you were doing. You have been using Philip Wakem 
as a screen to deceive Lucy, — the kindest friend you ever 
had. Go and see the return you have made her. She’s ill; 
unable to speak. My mother can’t go near her, lest she 
should remind her of you.” 

Maggie was half stunned, — too heavily pressed upon by 
her anguish even to discern any difference between her ac- 


532 MILL ON THE FLOSS 

tual guilt and her brother’s accusations, still less to vindicate 
herself. 

“ Tom,” she said, crushing her hands together under her 
cloak, in the effort to speak again, “ whatever I have done, 
I repent it bitterly. I want to make amends. I will endure 
anything. I want to be kept from doing wrong again.” 

“What will keep you? ” said Tom, with cruel bitterness. 
“Not religion; not your natural feelings of gratitude and 
honor. And he — he would deserve to be shot, if it were 

not- But you are ten times worse than he is. I loathe 

your character and your conduct. You struggled with your 
feelings, you say. Yes! I have had feelings to struggle 
with; but I conquered them. I have had a harder life than 
you have had; but I have found my comfort in doing my 
duty. But I will sanction no such character as yours; the 
world shall know that I feel the difference between right and 
wrong. If you are in want, I will provide for you; let my 
mother know. But you shall not come under my roof. It 
is enough that I have to bear the thought of your disgrace; 
the sight of you is hateful to me.” 

Slowly Maggie was turning away with despair in her 
heart. But the poor frightened mother’s love leaped out 
now, stronger than all dread. 

“ My child! I’ll go with you. You’ve got a mother.” 

Oh, the sweet rest of that embrace to the heart-stricken 
Maggie! More helpful than all wisdom is one draught of 
simple human pity that will not forsake us. 

Tom turned and walked into the house. 

“ Come in, my child,” Mrs. Tulliver whispered. “ He’ll 
let you stay and sleep in my bed. He won’t deny that if I 
ask him.” 

“ No, mother,” said Maggie, in a low tone, like a moan. 
“ I will never go in.” 

“ Then wait for me outside. I’ll get ready and come with 
you.” 

When his mother appeared with her bonnet on, Tom 
came out to her in the passage, and put money into her 
hands. 


THE FINAL RESCUE 


533 

“ My house is yours, mother, always,” he said. “ You will 
come and let me know everything you want; you will come 
back to me.” 

Poor Mrs. Tulliver took the money, too frightened to say 
anything. The only thing clear to her was the mother's in- 
stinct that she would go with her unhappy child. 

Maggie was waiting outside the gate; she took her 
mother's hand, and they walked a little way in silence. 

“ Mother,” said Maggie, at last, “ we will go to Luke's 
cottage. Luke will take me in. He was very good to me 
when I w T as a little girl.” 

“He's got no room for us, my dear, now; his wife’s got 
so many children. I don’t know where to go, if it isn't 
to one o' your aunts; and I hardly durst,” said poor Mrs. 
Tulliver, quite destitute of mental resources in this ex¬ 
tremity. 

Maggie was silent a little while, and then said, — 

“Let us go to Bob Jakin’s, mother; his wife will have 
room for us, if they have no other lodger.” 

So they went on their way to St. Ogg's, to the old house 
by the river-side. 

Bob himself was at home, with a heaviness at heart which 
resisted even the new joy and pride of possessing a two- 
months-old baby, quite the liveliest of its age that had ever 
been born to prince or packman. He would perhaps not 
so thoroughly have understood all the dubiousness of Mag¬ 
gie's appearance with Mr. Stephen Guest on the quay at 
Mudport if he had not witnessed the effect it produced on 
Tom when he went to report it; and since then, the circum¬ 
stances which in any case gave a disastrous character to her 
elopement had passed beyond the more polite circles of St. 
Ogg's, and had become matter of common talk, accessible 
to the grooms and errand-boys. So that when he opened 
the door and saw Maggie standing before him in her sorrow 
and weariness, he had no questions to ask except one which 
he dared only ask himself, — where was Mr. Stephen Guest? 
Bob, for his part, hoped he might be in the warmest depart¬ 
ment of an asylum understood to exist in the other world 


534 MILL ON THE FLOSS 

for gentlemen who are likely to be in fallen circumstances 
there. 

The lodgings were vacant, and both Mrs. Jakin the larger 
and Mrs. Jakin the less were commanded to make all things 
comfortable for “ the old Missis and the young Miss alas 
that she was still “ Miss! ” The ingenious Bob was sorely 
perplexed as to how this result could have come about; how 
Mr. Stephen Guest could have gone away from her, or could 
have let her go away from him, when he had the chance of 
keeping her with him. But he was silent, and would not 
allow his wife to ask him a question; would not present 
himself in the room, lest it should appear like intrusion and 
a wish to pry; having the same chivalry toward dark-eyed 
Maggie as in the days when he had bought her the memo¬ 
rable present of books. 

But after a day or two Mrs. Tulliver was gone to the Mill 
again for a few hours to see to Tom’s household matters. 
Maggie had wished this; after the first violent outburst of 
feeling which came as soon as she had no longer any active 
purpose to fulfil, she was less in need of her mother’s pres¬ 
ence; she even desired to be' alone with her grief. But she 
had been solitary only a little while in the old sitting-room 
that looked on the river, when there came a tap at the door, 
and turning round her sad face as she said, “ Come in,” she 
saw Bob enter, with the baby in his arms and Mumps at 
his heels. 

“ We’ll go back, if it disturbs you, Miss,” said Bob. 

“ No,” said Maggie, in a low voice, wishing she could 
smile. 

Bob, closing the door behind him, came and stood before 
her. 

“ You see, we’ve got a little un, Miss, and I wanted you 
to look at it, and take it in your arms, if you’d be so good. 
For we made free to name it after you, and it ’ud be better 
for your takin’ a bit o’ notice on it.” 

Maggie could not speak, but she put out her arms to re¬ 
ceive the tiny baby, while Mumps snuffed at it anxiously, to 
ascertain that this transference was all right. Maggie’s 


THE FINAL RESCUE 


535 


heart had swelled at this action and speech of Bob’s; she 
knew well enough that it was a way he had chosen to show 
his sympathy and respect. 

“ Sit down, Bob,” she said presently, and he sat down in 
silence, finding his tongue unmanageable in quite a new 
fashion, refusing to say what he wanted it to say. 

“ Bob,” she said, after a few moments, looking down at 
the baby, and holding it anxiously, as if she feared it might 
slip from her mind and her fingers, “ I have a favor to ask 
of you.” 

“ Don’t you speak so, Miss,” said Bob, grasping the skin 
of Mumps’s neck; “ if there’s anything I can do for you, I 
should look upon it as a day’s earnings.” 

“ I want you to go to Dr. Kenn’s, and ask to speak to 
him, and tell him that I am here, and should be very grate¬ 
ful if he would come to me while my mother is away. She 
will not come back till evening.” 

“ Eh, Miss, I’d do it in a minute, — it is but a step, — 
but Dr. Kenn’s wife lies dead; she’s to be buried to-morrow; 
died the day I come from Mudport. It’s all the more pity 
she should ha’ died just now, if you want him. I hardly 
like to go a-nigh him yet.” 

“ Oh no, Bob,” said Maggie, “ we must let it be, — till 
after a few days, perhaps, when you hear that he is going 
about again. But perhaps he may be going out of town — 
to a distance,” she added, with a new sense of despondency 
at this idea. 

“ Not he, Miss,” said Bob. “ He’ll none go away. He 
isn’t one o’ them gentlefolks as go to cry at waterin’-places 
when their wives die; he’s got summat else to do. He looks 
fine and sharp after the parish, he does. He christened the 
little un; an’ he was at me to know what I did of a Sunday, 
as I didn’t come to church. But I told him I was upo’ the 
travel three parts o’ the Sundays, — an’ then I’m so used to 
bein’ on my legs* I can’t sit so long on end, — ‘ an’ lors, sir/ 
says I, ‘ a packman can do wi’ a small ’lowance o’ church; it 
tastes strong,’ says I; * there’s no call to lay it on thick.’ 
Eh, Miss, how good the little un is wi’ you! It’s like as if 


536 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


it knowed you; it partly does, I'll be bound, — like the birds 
know the mornin’.” 

Bob’s tongue was now evidently loosed from its unwonted 
bondage, and might even be in danger of doing more work 
than was required of it. But the subjects on which he 
longed to be informed were so steep and difficult of ap¬ 
proach, that his tongue was likely to run on along the level 
rather than to carry him on that unbeaten road. He felt 
this, and was silent again for a little while, ruminating much 
on the possible forms in which he might put a question. At 
last he said, in a more timid voice than usual, — 

“ Will you give me leave to ask you only one thing, 
Miss ? ” 

Maggie was rather startled, but she answered, “ Yes, Bob, 
if it is about myself — not about any one else.” 

“ Well, Miss, it’s this. Do you owe anybody a grudge? ” 

“ No, not any one,” said Maggie, looking up at him in¬ 
quiringly. “Why?” 

“ Oh, lors, Miss,” said Bob, pinching Mumps’s neck harder 
than ever. “ I wish you did, an’ ’ud tell me; I’d leather him 
till I couldn’t see — I would — an’ the Justice might do 
what he liked to me arter.” 

“ Oh, Bob,” said Maggie, smiling faintly, “ you’re a very 
good friend to me. But I shouldn’t like to punish any one, 
even if they’d done me wrong; I’ve done wrong myself too 
often.” 

This view of things was puzzling to Bob, and threw more 
obscurity than ever over what could possibly have hap¬ 
pened between Stephen and Maggie. But further questions 
would have been too intrusive, even if he could have framed 
them suitably, and he was obliged to carry baby away again 
to an expectant mother. 

“ Happen you’d like Mumps for company, Miss,” he said 
when he had taken the baby again. “ He’s rare company, 
Mumps is; he knows iverything, an’ makes no bother about 
it. If I tell him, he’ll lie before you an’ watch you, as still, 
— just as he watches my pack. You’d better let me leave 
him a bit; he’ll get fond on you. Lors, it’s a fine thing to 


THE FINAL RESCUE 


537 

hev a dumb brute fond on you; it’ll stick to you, an’ make 
no jaw.” 

“ Yes, do leave him, please,” said Maggie. “ I think I 
should like to have Mumps for a friend.” 

“ Mumps, lie down there,” said Bob, pointing to a place 
in front of Maggie, “ and niver do you stir till you’re 
spoke to.” 

Mumps lay down at once, and made no sign of restless¬ 
ness when his master left the room. 


CHAPTER II 

ST. ogg’s passes judgment 

I T WAS soon known throughout St. Ogg’s that Miss Tulli- 
ver was come back; she had not, then, eloped in order 
to be married to Mr. Stephen Guest, — at all events, Mr. 
Stephen Guest had not married her; which came to the 
same thing, so far as her culpability was concerned. We 
judge others according to results; how else? — not knowing 
the process by which results are arrived at. If Miss Tulli- 
ver, after a few months of well-chosen travel, had returned 
as Mrs. Stephen Guest, with a post-marital trousseau, and 
all the advantages possessed even by the most unwelcome 
wife of an only son, public opinion, which at St. Ogg’s, as 
elsewhere, always knew what to think, would have judged 
in strict consistency with those results. Public opinion, in 
these cases, is always of the feminine gender, — not the 
world, but the world’s wife; and she would have seen that 
two handsome young people — the gentleman of quite the 
first family in St. Ogg’s — having found themselves in a 
false position, had been led into a course which, to say the 
least of it, was highly injudicious, and productive of sad 
pain and disappointment, especially to that sweet young 
thing, Miss Deane. 

Mr. Stephen Guest had certainly not behaved well; but 


538 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


then, young men were liable to those sudden infatuated 
attachments; and bad as it might seem in Mrs. Stephen 
Guest to admit the faintest advances from her cousin’s 
lover (indeed it had been said that she was actually en¬ 
gaged to young Wakem, — old Wakem himself had 
mentioned it), still, she was very young, — “and a de¬ 
formed young man, you know! — and young Guest so very 
fascinating; and, they say, he positively worships her (to 
be sure, that can’t last!), and he ran away with her in the 
boat quite against her will, and what could she do? She 
couldn’t come back then; no one would have spoken to her; 
and how very well that maize-colored satinette becomes her 
complexion! It seems as if the folds in front were quite 
come in; several of her dresses are made so, — they say he 
thinks nothing too handsome to buy for her. Poor Miss 
Deane! She is very pitiable; but then there was no posi¬ 
tive engagement; and the air at the coast will do her good. 
After all, if young Guest felt no more for her than that, it 
was better for her not to marry him. What a wonderful 
marriage for a girl like Miss Tulliver, — quite romantic! 
Why, young Guest will put up for the borough at the next 
election. Nothing like commerce nowadays! That young 
Wakem nearly went out of his mind; he always was rather 
queer; but he’s gone abroad again to be out of the way,— 
quite the best thing for a deformed young man. Miss Unit 
declares she will never visit Mr. and Mrs. Stephen Guest, 
— such nonsense! pretending to be better than other people. 
Society couldn’t be carried on if we inquired into private 
conduct in that way, — and Christianity tells us to think 
no evil, — and my belief is, that Miss Unit had no cards 
sent her.” 

But the results, we know, were not of a kind to warrant 
this extenuation of the past. Maggie had returned without 
a trousseau, without a husband, — in that degraded and 
outcast condition to which error is well known to lead; and 
the world’s wife, with that fine instinct which is given her 
for the preservation of Society, saw at once that Miss Tulli- 
ver’s conduct had been of the most aggravated kind. Could 


THE FINAL RESCUE 


539 


anything be more detestable? A girl so much indebted to 
her friends — whose mother as well as herself had received 
so much kindness from the Deanes — to lay the design of 
winning a young man’s affections away from her own cousin, 
who had behaved like a sister to her! Winning his affec¬ 
tions? That was not the phrase for such a girl as Miss 
Tulliver; it would have been more correct to say that she 
had been actuated by mere unwomanly boldness and un¬ 
bridled passion. There was always something questionable 
about her. That connection with young Wakem, which, 
they said, had been carried on for years, looked very ill, — 
disgusting, in fact! But with a girl of that disposition! 
To the world’s wife there had always been something in 
Miss Tulliver’s very physique that a refined instinct felt to 
be prophetic of harm. As for poor Mr. Stephen Guest, he 
was rather pitiable than otherwise; a young man of five- 
and-twenty is not to be too severely judged in these cases, 

— he is really very much at the mercy of a designing, bold 
girl. And it was clear that he had given way in spite of 
himself: he had shaken her off as soon as he could; indeed, 
their having parted so soon looked very black indeed — for 
her. To be sure, he had written a letter, laying all the 
blame on himself, and telling the story in a romantic fash¬ 
ion so as to try and make her appear quite innocent; of 
course he would do that! But the refined instinct of the 
world’s wife was not to be deceived; providentially! —else 
what would become of Society? Why, her own brother had 
turned her from his door; he had seen enough, you might 
be sure, before he would do that. A truly respectable young 
man, Mr. Tom Tulliver; quite likely to rise in the world! 
His sister’s disgrace was naturally a heavy blow to him. It 
was to be hoped that she would go out of the neighborhood, 

— to America, or anywhere, — so as to purify the air of 
St. Ogg’s from the stain of her presence, extremely danger¬ 
ous to daughters there! No good could happen to her; it 
was only to be hoped she would repent, and that God would 
have mercy on her: He had not the care of Society on His 
hands, as the world’s wife had. 


540 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


It required nearly a fortnight for fine instinct to assure 
itself of these inspirations; indeed, it was a whole week be¬ 
fore Stephen’s letter came, telling his father the facts, and 
adding that he was gone across to Holland, — had drawn 
upon the agent at Mudport for money, — was incapable of 
any resolution at present. 

Maggie, all this while, was too entirely filled with a more 
agonizing anxiety to spend any thought on the view that 
was being taken of her conduct by the world of St. Ogg’s; 
anxiety about Stephen, Lucy, Philip, beat on her poor heart 
in a hard, driving, ceaseless storm of mingled love, remorse, 
and pity. If she had thought of rejection and injustice at 
all, it would have seemed to her that they had done their 
worst; that she could hardly feel any stroke from them 
intolerable since the words she had heard from her brother’s 
lips. Across all her anxiety for the loved and the injured, 
those words shot again and again, like a horrible pang that 
would have brought misery and dread even into a heaven 
of delights. The idea of ever recovering happiness never 
glimmered in her mind for a moment; it seemed as if every 
sensitive fibre in her were too entirely preoccupied by pain 
ever to vibrate again to another influence. Life stretched 
before her as one act of penitence; and all she craved, as 
she dwelt on her future lot, was something to guarantee her 
from more falling; her own weakness haunted her like a 
vision of hideous possibilities, that made no peace conceiv¬ 
able except such as lay in the sense of a sure refuge. 

But she was not without practical intentions; the love of 
independence was too strong an inheritance and a habit for 
her not to remember that she must get her bread; and when 
other projects looked vague, she fell back on that of return¬ 
ing to her plain sewing, and so getting enough to pay for 
her lodging at Bob’s. She meant to persuade her mother 
to return to the Mill by and by, and live with Tom again; 
and somehow or other she would maintain herself at St. 
Ogg’s. Dr. Kenn would perhaps help her and advise her. 
She remembered his parting words at the bazaar. She re¬ 
membered the momentary feeling of reliance that had sprung 


THE FINAL RESCUE 


541 


in her when he was talking with her, and she waited with 
yearning expectation for the opportunity of confiding every¬ 
thing to him. Her mother called every day at Mr. Deane’s 
to learn how Lucy was; the report was always sad, — noth¬ 
ing had yet roused her from the feeble passivity which had 
come on with the first shock. But of Philip, Mrs. Tulliver 
had learned nothing; naturally, no one whom she met 
would speak to her about what related to her daughter. 
But at last she summoned courage to go and see sister 
Glegg, who of course would know everything, and had been 
even to see Tom at the Mill in Mrs. Tulliver’s absence, 
though he had said nothing of what had passed on the 
occasion. 

As soon as her mother was gone, Maggie put on her bon¬ 
net. She had resolved on walking to the Rectory and asking 
to see Dr. Kenn; he was in deep grief, but the grief of an¬ 
other does not jar upon us in such circumstances. It was 
the first time she had been beyond the door since her re¬ 
turn; nevertheless her mind was so bent on the purpose of 
her walk, that the unpleasantness of meeting people on the 
way, and being stared at, did not occur to her. But she 
had no sooner passed beyond the narrower streets which she 
had to thread from Bob’s dwelling, than she became aware 
of unusual glances cast at her; and this consciousness made 
her hurry along nervously, afraid to look to right or left. 
Presently, however, she came full on Mrs. and Miss Turn- 
bull, old acquaintances of her family; they both looked at 
her strangely, and turned a little aside without speaking. 
All hard looks were pain to Maggie, but her self-reproach 
was too strong for resentment. No wonder they will not 
speak to me, she thought; they are very fond of Lucy. But 
now she knew that she was about to pass a group of gentle¬ 
men, who were standing at the door of the billiard-rooms, 
and she could not help seeing young Torry step out a little 
with his glass at his eye, and bow to her with that air of 
nonchalance which he might have bestowed on a friendly 
barmaid. Maggie’s pride was too intense for her not to 
feel that sting, even in the midst of her sorrow; and for the 


542 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


first time the thought took strong hold of her that she 
would have other obloquy cast on her besides that which 
was felt to be due to her breach of faith toward Lucy. But 
she was at the Rectory now; there, perhaps, she would 
find something else than retribution. Retribution may come 
from any voice; the hardest, cruelest, most imbruted urchin 
at the street-corner can inflict it; surely help and pity are 
rarer things, more needful for the righteous to bestow. 

She was shown up at once, after being announced, into 
Dr. Kenn’s study, where he sat amongst piled-up books, for 
which he had little appetite, leaning his cheek against the 
head of his youngest child, a girl of three. The child was 
sent away with the servant, and when the door was closed, 
Dr. Kenn said, placing a chair for Maggie, — 

“I was coming to see you, Miss Tulliver; you have an¬ 
ticipated me; I am glad you did.” 

Maggie looked at him with her childlike directness as she 
had done at the bazaar, and said, “ I want to tell you every¬ 
thing.” But her eyes filled fast with tears as she said it, 
and all the pent-up excitement of her humiliating walk 
would have its vent before she could say more. 

“ Do tell me everything,” Dr. Kenn said, with quiet kind¬ 
ness in his grave, firm voice. “ Think of me as one to whom 
a long experience has been granted, which may enable him 
to help you.” 

In rather broken sentences, and with some effort at first, 
but soon with the greater ease that came from a sense of 
relief in the confidence, Maggie told the brief story of a 
struggle that must be the beginning of a long sorrow. Only 
the day before, Dr. Kenn had been made acquainted with 
the contents of Stephen’s letter, and he had believed them 
at once, without the confirmation of Maggie’s statement. 
That involuntary plaint of hers, “ Oh, I must go,” had re¬ 
mained with him as the sign that she was undergoing some 
inward conflict. 

Maggie dwelt the longest on the feeling which had made 
her come back to her mother and brother, which made her 
cling to all the memories of the past. When she had ended, 


THE FINAL RESCUE 


543 


Dr. Kenn was silent for some minutes; there was a difficulty 
on his mind. He rose, and walked up and down the hearth 
with his hands behind him. At last he seated himself again, 
and said, looking at Maggie, — 

“Your prompting to go to your nearest friends, — to re¬ 
main where all the ties of your life have been formed, — is 
a true prompting, to which the Church in its original con¬ 
stitution and discipline responds, opening its arms to the 
penitent, watching over its children to the last; never 
abandoning them until they are hopelessly reprobate. And 
the Church ought to represent the feeling of the community, 
so that every parish should be a family knit together by 
Christian brotherhood under a spiritual father. But the 
ideas of discipline and Christian fraternity are entirely re¬ 
laxed, — they can hardly be said to exist in the public mind; 
they hardly survive except in the partial, contradictory 
form they have taken in the narrow communities of schis¬ 
matics; and if I were not supported by the firm faith that 
the Church must ultimately recover the full force of that 
constitution which is alone fitted to human needs, I should 
often lose heart at observing the want of fellowship and 
sense of mutual responsibility among my own flock. At 
present everything seems tending toward the relaxation of 
ties, — toward the substitution of wayward choice for the 
adherence to obligation, which has its roots in the past. 
Your conscience and your heart have given you true light on 
this point, Miss Tulliver; and I have said all this that you 
may know what my wish about you — what my advice to 
you — would be, if they sprang from my own feeling and 
opinion unmodified by counteracting circumstances.” 

Dr. Kenn paused a little while. There was an entire ab¬ 
sence of effusive benevolence in his manner; there was some¬ 
thing almost cold in the gravity of his look and voice. If 
Maggie had not known that his benevolence was persever¬ 
ing in proportion to its reserve, she might have been chilled 
and frightened. As it was, she listened expectantly, quite 
sure that there would be some effective help in his words. 
He went on. 


544 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


“ Your inexperience of the world, Miss Tulliver, prevents 
you from anticipating fully the very unjust conceptions that 
will probably be formed concerning your conduct, — con¬ 
ceptions which will have a baneful effect, even in spite of 
known evidence to disprove them.” 

“ Oh, I do, — I begin to see,” said Maggie, unable to re¬ 
press this utterance of her recent pain. “ I know I shall be 
insulted. I shall be thought worse than I am.” 

“ You perhaps do not yet know,” said Dr. Kenn, with a 
touch of more personal pity, “ that a letter is come which 
ought to satisfy every one who has known anything of you, 
that you chose the steep and difficult path of a return to 
the right, at the moment when that return was most of all 
difficult.” 

“ Oh, where is he ? ” said poor Maggie, with a flush and 
tremor that no presence could have hindered. 

“ He is gone abroad; he has written of all that passed to 
his father. He has vindicated you to the utmost; and I 
hope the communication of that letter to your cousin will 
have a beneficial effect on her.” 

Dr. Kenn waited for her to get calm again before he went 
on. 

“ That letter, as I said, ought to suffice to prevent false 
impressions concerning you. But I am bound to tell you, 
Miss Tulliver, that not only the experience of my whole life, 
but my observation within the last three days, makes me 
fear that there is hardly any evidence which will save you 
from the painful effect of false imputations. The persons 
who are the most incapable of a conscientious struggle such 
as yours are precisely those who will be likely to shrink 
from you, because they will not believe in your struggle. I 
fear your life here will be attended not only with much pain, 
but with many obstructions. For this reason — and for this 
only — I ask you to consider whether it will not perhaps be 
better for you to take a situation at a distance, according to 
your former intention. I will exert myself at once to ob¬ 
tain one for you.” 

“ Oh, if I could but stop here! ” said Maggie. “ I have no 


THE FINAL RESCUE 


545 

heart to begin a strange life again. I should have no stay. 
I should feel like a lonely wanderer, cut off from the past. 
I have written to the lady who offered me a situation to 
excuse myself. If I remained here, I could perhaps atone in 
some way to Lucy — to others; I could convince them that 
I’m sorry. And,” she added, with some of the old proud 
fire flashing out, “ I will not go away because people say 
false things of me. They shall learn to retract them. If 
I must go away at last, because — because others wish it, 
I will not go now.” 

“ Well,” said Dr. Kenn, after some consideration, “ if you 
determine on that, Miss Tulliver, you may rely on all the 
influence my position gives me. I am bound to aid and 
countenance you by the very duties of my office as a parish 
priest. I will add, that personally I have a deep interest 
in your peace of mind and welfare.” 

“ The only thing I want is some occupation that will en¬ 
able me to get my bread and be independent,” said Mag¬ 
gie. “ I shall not want much. I can go on lodging where 
I am.” 

“ I must think over the subject maturely,” said Dr. Kenn, 
“ and in a few days I shall be better able to ascertain the 
general feeling. I shall come to see you; I shall bear you 
constantly in mind.” 

When Maggie had left him, Dr. Kenn stood ruminating 
with his hands behind him, and his eyes fixed on the carpet, 
under a painful sense of doubt and difficulty. The tone of 
Stephen’s letter, which he had read, and the actual rela¬ 
tions of all the persons concerned, forced upon him power¬ 
fully the idea of an ultimate marriage between Stephen and 
Maggie as the least evil; and the impossibility of their prox¬ 
imity in St. Ogg’s on any other supposition, until after years 
of separation, threw an insurmountable prospective diffi¬ 
culty over Maggie’s stay there. On the other hand, he en¬ 
tered, with all the comprehension of a man who had known 
spiritual conflict, and lived through years of devoted ser¬ 
vice to his fellow-men, into that state of Maggie’s heart and 
conscience which made the consent to the marriage a dese- 


546 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


cration to her; her conscience must not be tampered with; 
the principle on which she had acted was a safer guide than 
any balancing of consequences. His experience told him 
that intervention was too dubious a responsibility to be 
lightly incurred; the possible issue either of an endeavor to 
restore the former relations with Lucy and Philip, or of 
counselling submission to this irruption of a new feeling, was 
hidden in a darkness all the more impenetrable because each 
immediate step was clogged with evil. 


CHAPTER III 

SHOWING THAT OLD ACQUAINTANCES ARE CAPABLE OF 
SURPRISING US 

W HEN Maggie was at home again, her mother brought 
her news of an unexpected line of conduct in aunt 
Glegg. As long as Maggie had not been heard of, Mrs. 
Glegg had half closed her shutters and drawn down her 
blinds. She felt assured that Maggie was drowned; that was 
far more probable than that her niece and legatee should 
have done anything to wound the family honor in the ten- 
derest point. When at last she learned from Tom that Mag¬ 
gie had come home, and gathered from him what was her 
explanation of her absence, she burst forth in severe re¬ 
proof of Tom for admitting the worst of his sister until he 
was compelled. 

If you were not to stand by your “ kin ” as long as 
there was a shred of honor attributable to them, pray 
what were you to stand by? Lightly to admit conduct 
in one of your own family that would force you to alter your 
will, had never been the way of the Dodsons; and though 
Mrs. Glegg had always augured ill of Maggie’s future at a 
time when other people were perhaps less clear-sighted, yet 
fair play was a jewel, and it was not for her own friends to 
help to rob the girl of her fair fame, and to cast her out 


THE FINAL RESCUE 


547 

from family shelter to the scorn of the outer world, until 
she had become unequivocally a family disgrace. The cir¬ 
cumstances were unprecedented in Mrs. Glegg’s experience; 
nothing of that kind had happened among the Dodsons be¬ 
fore ; but it was a case in which her hereditary rectitude and 
personal strength of character found a common channel 
along with her fundamental ideas of clanship, as they did in 
her lifelong regard to equity in money matters. She quar¬ 
relled with Mr. Glegg, whose kindness, flowing entirely into 
compassion for Lucy, made him as hard in his judgment 
of Maggie as Mr. Deane himself was; and fuming against 
her sister Tulliver because she did not at once come to her 
for advice and help, shut herself up in her own room with 
Baxter’s Saints’ Rest from morning till night, denying her¬ 
self to all visitors, till Mr. Glegg brought from Mr. Deane 
the news of Stephen’s letter. Then Mrs. Glegg felt that she 
had adequate fighting-ground; then she laid aside Baxter, 
and was ready to meet all comers. While Mrs. Pullet could 
do nothing but shake her head and cry, and wish that cousin 
Abbot had died, or any number of funerals had happened 
rather than this, which had never happened before, so that 
there was no knowing hbw to act, and Mrs. Pullet could 
never enter St. Ogg’s again, because “ acquaintances ” knew 
of it all, Mrs. Glegg only hoped that Mrs. Wooll, or any one 
else, would come to her with their false tales about her own 
niece, and she would know what to say to that ill-advised 
person! 

Again she had a scene of remonstrance with Tom, all the 
more severe in proportion to the greater strength of her pres¬ 
ent position. But Tom, like other immovable things, seemed 
only the more rigidly fixed under that attempt to shake 
h im . Poor Tom! he judged by what he had been able to 
see; and the judgment was painful enough to himself. He 
thought he had the demonstration of facts observed through 
years by his own eyes, which gave no warning of their im¬ 
perfection, that Maggie’s nature was utterly untrustworthy, 
and too strongly marked with evil tendencies to be safely 
treated with leniency. He would act on that demonstration 


548 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


at any cost; but the thought of it made his days bitter to 
him. Tom, like every one of us, was imprisoned within the 
limits of his own nature, and his education had simply glided 
over him, leaving a slight deposit of polish; if you are in¬ 
clined to be severe on his severity, remember that the re¬ 
sponsibility of tolerance lies with those who have the wider 
vision. 

There had arisen in Tom a repulsion toward Maggie 
that derived its very intensity from their early childish 
love in the time when they had clasped tiny fingers to¬ 
gether, and their later sense of nearness in a common duty 
and a common sorrow; the sight of her, as he had told her, 
was hateful to him. In this branch of the Dodson family 
aunt Glegg found a stronger nature than her own; a nature 
in which family feeling had lost the character of clanship 
by taking on a doubly deep dye of personal pride. Mrs. 
Glegg allowed that Maggie ought to be punished, — she was 
not a woman to deny that; she knew what conduct was, — 
but punished in proportion to the misdeeds proved against 
her, not to those which were cast upon her by people out¬ 
side her own family, who might wish to show that their 
own kin were better. * 

“ Your aunt Glegg scolded me so as niver was, my dear,” 
said poor Mrs. Tulliver, when she came back to Maggie, 
“ as I didn’t go to her before; she said it wasn’t for her to 
come to me first. But she spoke like a sister, too; having 
she allays was, and hard to please, — oh dear! — but she’s 
said the kindest word as has ever been spoke by you yet, 
my child. For she says, for all she’s been so set again’ hav¬ 
ing one extry in the house, and making extry spoons and 
things, and putting her about in her ways, you shall have a 
shelter in her house, if you’ll go to her dutiful, and she’ll up¬ 
hold you against folks as say harm of you when they’ve no 
call. And I told her I thought you couldn’t bear to see 
anybody but me, you were so beat down with trouble; but 
she said, ‘I won’t throw ill words at her; there’s them out 
o’ th’ family ’ull be ready enough to do that. But I’ll give 
her good advice; an’ she must be humble.’ It’s wonderful 


THE FINAL RESCUE 


549 


o’ Jane; for I’m sure she used to throw everything I did 
wrong at me, — if it was the raisin-wine as turned out bad, 
or the pies too hot, or whativer it was.” 

“ Oh, mother,” said poor Maggie, shrinking from the 
thought of all the contact her bruised mind would have to 
bear, “ tell her I’m very grateful; I’ll go to see her as soon 
as I can; but I can’t see any one just yet, except Dr. Kenn. 
I’ve been to him, — he will advise me, and help me to get 
some occupation. I can’t live with any one, or be dependent 
on them, tell aunt Glegg; I must get my own bread. But 
did you hear nothing of Philip — Philip Wakem? Have 
you never seen any one that has mentioned him ? ” 

“ No, my dear; but I’ve been to Lucy’s, and I saw your 
uncle, and he says they got her to listen to the letter, and 
she took notice o’ Miss Guest, and asked questions, and the 
doctor thinks she’s on the turn to be better. What a world 
this is, — what trouble, oh, dear! The law was the first 
beginning, and it’s gone from bad to worse, all of a sudden, 
just when the luck seemed on the turn.” This was the first 
lamentation that Mrs. Tulliver had let slip to Maggie, but 
old habit had been revived by the interview with sister 
Glegg. 

“ My poor, poor mother! ” Maggie burst out, cut to the 
heart with pity and compunction, and throwing her arms 
round her mother’s neck; “ I was always naughty and 
troublesome to you. And now you might have been happy 
if it hadn’t been for me.” 

“ Eh, my dear,” said Mrs. Tulliver, leaning toward the 
warm young cheek; “I must put up wi’ my children, — I 
shall never have no more; and if they bring me bad luck, 
I must be fond on it. There’s nothing else much to be fond 
on, for my furnitur’ went long ago. And you’d got to be 
very good once; I can’t think how it’s turned out the wrong 
way so! ” 

Still two or three more days passed, and Maggie heard 
nothing of Philip; anxiety about him was becoming her pre¬ 
dominant trouble, and she summoned courage at last to in¬ 
quire about him of Dr. Kenn, on his next visit to her. He 


550 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


did not even know if Philip was at home. The elder Wakem 
was made moody by an accumulation of annoyance; the 
disappointment in this young Jetsome, to whom, apparently, 
he was a good deal attached, had been followed close by the 
catastrophe to his son’s hopes after he had done violence to 
his own strong feeling by conceding to them, and had in¬ 
cautiously mentioned this concession in St. Ogg’s; and he 
was almost fierce in his brusqueness when any one asked 
him a question about his son. But Philip could hardly have 
been ill, or it would have been known through the calling in 
of the medical man; it was probable that he was gone out 
of the town for a little while. Maggie sickened under this 
suspense, and her imagination began to live more and more 
persistently in what Philip was enduring. What did he be¬ 
lieve about her? 

At last Bob brought her a letter, without a postmark, 
directed in a hand which she knew familiarly in the letters 
of her own name, — a hand in which her name had been 
written long ago, in a pocket Shakespeare which she pos¬ 
sessed. Her mother was in the room, and Maggie, in violent 
agitation, hurried upstairs that she might read the letter in 
solitude. She read it with a throbbing brow. 

“ Maggie, — I believe in you; I know you never meant 
to deceive me; I know you tried to keep faith to me and to 
all. I believed this before I had any other evidence of it 
than your own nature. The night after I last parted from 
you I suffered torments. I had seen what convinced me that 
you were not free; that there was another whose presence 
had a power over you which mine never possessed; but 
through all the suggestions — almost murderous suggestions 
— of rage and jealousy, my mind made its way to believe in 
your truthfulness. I was sure that you meant to cleave to 
me, as you had said; that you had rejected him; that you 
struggled to renounce him, for Lucy’s sake and for mine. 
But I could see no issue that was not fatal for you; and that 
dread shut out the very thought of resignation. I foresaw 
that he would not relinquish you, and I believed then, as I 


THE FINAL RESCUE 


551 


believe now, that the strong attraction which drew you to¬ 
gether proceeded only from one side of your characters, and 
belonged to that partial, divided action of our nature which 
makes half the tragedy of the human lot. I have felt the 
vibration of chords in your nature that I have continually 
felt the want of in his. But perhaps I am wrong; perhaps I 
feel about you as the artist does about the scene over which 
his soul has brooded with love; he would tremble to see it 
confided to other hands; he would never believe that it could 
bear for another all the meaning and the beauty it bears for 
him. 

“ I dared not trust myself to see you that morning; I was 
filled with selfish passion; I was shattered by a night of 
conscious delirium. I told you long ago that I had never 
been resigned even to the mediocrity of my powers; how 
could I be resigned to the loss of the one thing which had 
ever come to me on earth with the promise of such deep joy 
as would give a new and blessed meaning to the foregoing 
pain, — the promise of another self that would lift my 
aching affection into the divine rapture of an ever-springing, 
ever-satisfied want? 

“ But the miseries of that night had prepared me for what 
came before the next. It was no surprise to me. I was 
certain that he had prevailed on you to sacrifice everything 
to him, and I waited with equal certainty to hear of your 
marriage. I measured your love and his by my own. But 
I was wrong, Maggie. There is something stronger in you 
than your love for him. 

“ I will not tell you what I went through in that interval. 
But even in its utmost agony — even in those terrible throes 
that love must suffer before it can be disembodied of selfish 
desire — my love for you sufficed to withhold me from sui¬ 
cide, without the aid of any other motive. In the midst of 
my egoism, I yet could not bear to come like a death- 
shadow across the feast of your joy. I could not bear to 
forsake the world in which you still lived and might need 
me; it was part of the faith I had vowed to you, — to wait 
and endure. Maggie, that is a proof of what I write now 


552 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


to assure you of, — that no anguish I have had to bear on 
your account has been too heavy a price to pay for the new 
life into which I have entered in loving you. I want you to 
put aside all grief because of the grief you have caused me. 
I was nurtured in the sense of privation; I never expected 
happiness; and in knowing you, in loving you, I have had, 
and still have, what reconciles me to life. You have been to 
my affections what light, what color is to my eyes, what 
music is to the inward ear; you have raised a dim unrest into 
a vivid consciousness. The new life I have found in caring 
for your joy and'sorrow more than for what is directly my 
own has transformed the spirit of rebellious murmuring into 
that willing endurance which is the birth of strong sym¬ 
pathy. I think nothing but such complete and intense love 
could have initiated me into that enlarged life which grows 
and grows by appropriating the life of others; for before, I 
was always dragged back from it by ever-present painful 
self-consciousness. I even think sometimes that this gift 
of transferred life which has come to me in loving you may 
be a new power to me. 

“ Then, dear one, in spite of all, you have been the bless¬ 
ing of my life. Let no self-reproach weigh on you because of 
me. It is I who should rather reproach myself for having 
urged my feelings upon you, and hurried you into words that 
you have felt as fetters. You meant to be true to those 
words; you have been true. I can measure your sacrifice by 
what I have known in only one half-hour of your presence 
with me, when I dreamed that you might love me best. 
But, Maggie, I have no just claim on you for more than 
affectionate remembrance. 

“ For some time I have shrunk from writing to you, be¬ 
cause I have shrunk even from the appearance of wishing 
to thrust myself before you, and so repeating my original 
error. But you will not misconstrue me. I know that we 
must keep apart for a long while; cruel tongues would force 
us apart, if nothing else did. But I shall not go away. The 
place where you are is the one where my mind must live, 
wherever I might travel. And remember that I am un- 


THE FINAL RESCUE 553 

changeably yours, — yours not with selfish wishes, but with 
a devotion that excludes such wishes. 

“ God comfort you, my loving, large-souled Maggie. If 
every one else has misconceived you, remember that you 
have never been doubted by him whose heart recognized 
you ten years ago. 

“ Do not believe any one who says I am ill, because I am 
not seen out of doors. I have only had nervous headaches, 
— no worse than I have sometimes had them before. But 
the overpowering heat inclines me to be perfectly quiescent 
in the daytime. I am strong enough to obey any word 
which shall tell me that I can serve you by word or deed. 

“ Yours to the last, 

“ Philip Wakem ” 

As Maggie knelt by the bed sobbing, with that letter 
pressed under her, her feelings again and again gathered 
themselves in a whispered cry, always in the same words, — 

“ 0 God, is there any happiness in love that could make 
me forget their pain ? ” 


CHAPTER IV 

MAGGIE AND LUCY 

B Y THE end of the week Dr. Kenn had made up his mind 
that there was only one way in which he could secure 
to Maggie a suitable living at St. Ogg’s. Even with his 
twenty years’ experience as a parish priest, he was aghast 
at the obstinate continuance of imputations against her in 
the face of evidence. Hitherto he had been rather more 
adored and appealed to than was quite agreeable to him; 
but now, in attempting to open the ears of women to reason, 
and their consciences to justice, on behalf of Maggie Tul- 
liver, he suddenly found himself as powerless as he was 


554 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


aware he would have been if he had attempted to influence 
the shape of bonnets. Dr. Kenn could not be contradicted; 
he was listened to in silence; but when he left the room, a 
comparison of opinions among his hearers yielded much the 
same result as before. Miss Tulliver had undeniably acted 
in a blamable manner, even Dr. Kenn did not deny that; 
how, then, could he think so lightly of her as to put that 
favorable interpretation on everything she had done ? Even 
on the supposition that required the utmost stretch of be¬ 
lief, —• namely, that none of the things said about Miss Tul¬ 
liver were true, — still, since they had been said about her, 
they had cast an odor round her which must cause her to be 
shrunk from by every woman who had to take care of her 
own reputation — and of Society. 

To have taken Maggie by the hand and said, “ I will not 
believe unproved evil of you; my lips shall not utter it; 
my ears shall be closed against it; I, too, am an erring 
mortal, liable to stumble, apt to come short of my most 
earnest efforts; your lot has been harder than mine, your 
temptation greater; let us help each other to stand and 
walk without more falling/’ — to have done this would 
have demanded courage, deep pity, self-knowledge, gen¬ 
erous trust; would have demanded a mind that tasted no 
piquancy in evil-speaking, that felt no self-exaltation in 
condemning, that cheated itself with no large words into 
the belief that life can have any moral end, any high re¬ 
ligion, which excludes the striving after perfect truth, jus¬ 
tice, and love toward the individual men and women who 
come across our own path. 

The ladies of St. Ogg’s were not beguiled by any wide 
.speculative conceptions; but they had their favorite ab¬ 
straction, called Society, which served to make their con¬ 
sciences perfectly easy in doing what satisfied their own 
egoism, — thinking and speaking the worst of Maggie Tulli¬ 
ver, and turning their backs upon her. It was naturally dis¬ 
appointing to Dr. Kenn, after two years of superfluous in¬ 
cense from his feminine parishioners, to find them suddenly 
maintaining their views in opposition to his; but then they 


THE FINAL RESCUE 


555 


maintained them in opposition to a higher Authority, which 
they had venerated longer. That Authority had furnished 
a very explicit answer to persons who might inquire where 
their social duties began, and might be inclined to take wide 
views as to the starting-point. The answer had not turned 
on the ultimate good of Society, but on “ a certain man ” 
who was found in trouble by the wayside. 

Not that St. Ogg’s was empty of women with some ten¬ 
derness of heart and conscience; probably it had as fair a 
proportion of human goodness in it as any other small 
trading town of that day. But until every good man is 
brave, we must expect to find many good women timid, — 
too timid even to believe in the correctness of their own best 
promptings, when these would place them in a minority. 
And the men at St. Ogg’s were not all brave, by any means; 
some of them were even fond of scandal, and to an extent 
that might have given their conversation an effeminate char¬ 
acter, if it had not been distinguished by masculine jokes, 
and by an occasional shrug of the shoulders at the mutual 
hatred of women. It was the general feeling of the mas¬ 
culine mind in St. Ogg^s that women were not to be inter¬ 
fered with in their treatment of each other. 

And thus every direction in which Dr. Kenn had turned, 
in the hope of procuring some kind recognition and some 
employment for Maggie, proved a disappointment to him. 
Mrs. James Torry could not think of taking Maggie as a 
nursery governess, even temporarily, — a young woman 
about whom “ such things had been said,” and about whom 
“ gentlemen, joked ”; and Miss Kirke, who had a spinal com¬ 
plaint, and wanted a reader and companion, felt quite sure 
that Maggie’s mind must be of a quality with which she, for 
her part, could not risk any contact. Why did not Miss 
Tulliver accept the shelter offered her by her aunt Glegg? 
It did not become a girl like her to refuse it. Or else, why 
did she not go out of the neighborhood, and get a situation 
where she was not known? (It was not, apparently, of so 
much importance that she should carry her dangerous tend¬ 
encies into strange families unknown at St. Ogg’s.) She 


556 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


must be very bold and hardened to wish to stay in a parish 
where she was so much stared at and whispered about. 

Dr. Kenn, having great natural firmness, began, in the 
presence of this opposition, as every firm man would have 
done, to contract a certain strength of determination over 
and above what would have been called forth by the end in 
view. • He himself wanted a daily governess for his younger 
children; and though he had hesitated in the first instance 
to offer this position to Maggie, the resolution to protest 
with the utmost force of his personal and priestly character 
against her being crushed and driven away by slander, was 
now decisive. Maggie gratefully accepted an employment 
that gave her duties as welL as a support; her days would be 
filled now, and solitary evenings would be a welcome rest. 
She no longer needed the sacrifice her mother made in stay¬ 
ing with her, and Mrs. Tulliver was persuaded to go back 
to the Mill. 

But now it began to be discovered that Dr. Kenn, ex¬ 
emplary as he had hitherto appeared, had his crotchets, pos¬ 
sibly his weaknesses. The masculine mind of St. Ogg’s 
smiled pleasantly, and did not wonder that Kenn liked to 
see a fine pair of eyes daily, or that he was inclined to take 
so lenient a view of the past; the feminine mind, regarded 
at that period as less powerful, took a more melancholy view 
of the case. If Dr. Kenn should be beguiled into marrying 
that Miss Tulliver! It was not safe to be too confident, 
even about the best of men; an apostle had fallen, and wept 
bitterly afterward; and though Peter’s denial was not a 
close precedent, his repentance was likely to be. 

Maggie had not taken her daily walks to the Rectory for 
many weeks, before the dreadful possibility of her some time 
or other becoming the Rector’s wife had been talked of so 
often in confidence, that ladies were beginning to discuss 
how they should behave to her in that position. For Dr. 
Kenn, it had been understood, had sat in the schoolroom 
half an hour one morning, when Miss Tulliver was giving 
her lessons, — nay, he had sat there every morning; he had 
once walked home with her, — he almost always walked 


THE FINAL RESCUE 


557 


home with her, — and if not, he went to see her in the eve¬ 
ning. What an artful creature she was! What a mother for 
those children! It was enough to make poor Mrs. Kenn 
turn in her grave, that they should be put under the care 
of this girl only a few weeks after her death. Would he 
be so lost to propriety as to marry her before the year 
was out? The masculine mind was sarcastic, and thought 
not. 

The Miss Guests saw an alleviation to the sorrow of wit¬ 
nessing a folly in their Rector; at least their brother would 
be safe; and their knowledge of Stephen’s tenacity was a 
constant ground of alarm to them, lest he should come back 
and marry Maggie. They were not among those who dis¬ 
believed their brother’s letter; but they had no confidence in 
Maggie’s adherence to her renunciation of him; they sus¬ 
pected that she had shrunk rather from the elopement than 
from the marriage, and that she lingered in St. Ogg’s, rely¬ 
ing on his return to her. They had always thought her dis¬ 
agreeable; they now thought her artful and proud; having 
quite as good grounds for that judgment as you and I prob¬ 
ably have for many strong opinions of the same kind. 
Formerly they had not altogether delighted in the contem¬ 
plated match with Lucy, but now their dread of a marriage 
between Stephen and Maggie added its momentum to their 
genuine pity and indignation on behalf of the gentle for¬ 
saken girl, in making them desire that he should return to 
her. As soon as Lucy was able to leave home, she was to 
seek relief from the oppressive heat of this August by going 
to the coast with the Miss Guests; and it was in their plans 
that Stephen should be induced to join them. On the very 
first hint of gossip concerning Maggie and Dr. Kenn, the 
report was conveyed in Miss Guest’s letter to her brother. 

Maggie had frequent tidings through her mother, or aunt 
Glegg, or Dr. Kenn, of Lucy’s gradual progress toward re¬ 
covery, and her thoughts tended continually toward her 
uncle Deane’s house; she hungered for an interview with 
Lucy, if it were only for five minutes, to utter a word of 
penitence, to be assured by Lucy’s own eyes and lips that 


558 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


she did not believe in the willing treachery of those whom 
she had loved and trusted. But she knew that even if her 
uncle’s indignation had not closed his house against her, the 
agitation of such an interview would have been forbidden 
to Lucy. Only to have seen her without speaking would 
have been some relief; for Maggie was haunted by a face 
cruel in its very gentleness; a face that had been turned on 
hers with glad, sweet looks of trust and love from the twi¬ 
light time of memory; changed now to a sad and weary 
face by a first heart-stroke. And as the days passed on, that 
pale image became more and more distinct; the picture 
grew and grew into more speaking definiteness under the 
avenging hand of remorse; the soft hazel eyes, in their look 
of pain, were bent forever on Maggie, and pierced her the 
more because she could see no anger in them. But Lucy 
was not yet able to go to church, or any place where Mag¬ 
gie could see her; and even the hope of that departed, when 
the news was told her by aunt Glegg, that Lucy was really 
going away in a few days to Scarborough with the Miss 
Guests, who had been heard to say that they expected their 
brother to meet them there. 

Only those who have known what hardest inward con¬ 
flict is, can know what Maggie felt as she sat in her loneli¬ 
ness the evening after hearing that news from Mrs. Glegg, 
— only those who have known what it is to dread their own 
selfish desires as the watching mother would dread the 
sleeping-potion that was to still her own pain. 

She sat without candle in the twilight, with the window 
wide open toward the river; the sense of oppressive heat 
adding itself undistinguishably to the burthen of her lot. 
Seated on a chair against the window, with her arm on the 
window sill, she was looking blankly at the flowing river, 
swift with the backward-rushing tide, struggling to see still 
the sweet face in its unreproaching sadness, that seemed now 
from moment to moment to sink away and be hidden behind 
a form that thrust itself between, and made darkness. 
Hearing the door open, she thought Mrs. Jakin was coming 
in with her supper, as usual; and with that repugnance to 


THE FINAL RESCUE 


559 

trivial speech which comes with languor and wretchedness, 
she shrank from turning round and saying she wanted noth¬ 
ing; good little Mrs. Jakin would be sure to make some well- 
meant remarks. But the next moment, without her having 
discerned the sound of a footstep, she felt a light hand on 
her shoulder, and heard a voice close to her saying, “ Mag¬ 
gie! ” 

The face was there, — changed, but all the sweeter; the 
hazel eyes were there, with their heart-piercing tenderness. 

“ Maggie! ” the soft voice said. “ Lucy! ” answered a 
voice with a sharp ring of anguish in it; and Lucy threw her 
arms round Maggie's neck, and leaned her pale cheek against 
the burning brow. 

“ I stole out," said Lucy, almost in a whisper, while she 
sat down close to Maggie and held her hand, “ when papa 
and the rest were away. Alice is come with me. I asked 
her to help me. But I must only stay a little while, be¬ 
cause it is so late." 

It was easier to say that at first than to say anything else. 
They sat looking at each other. It seemed as if the inter¬ 
view must end without more speech, for speech was very 
difficult. Each felt that there would be something scorch¬ 
ing in the words that would recall the irretrievable wrong. 
But soon, as Maggie looked, every distinct thought began 
to be overflowed by a wave of loving penitence, and words 
burst forth with a sob. 

“ God bless you for coming, Lucy." 

The sobs came thick on each other after that. 

“ Maggie, dear, be comforted," said Lucy now, putting 
her cheek against Maggie's again. “ Don't grieve." And 
she sat still, hoping to soothe Maggie with that gentle caress. 

“ I didn't mean to deceive you, Lucy," said Maggie, as 
soon as she could speak. “ It always made me wretched 
that I felt what I didn’t like you to know. It was because 
I thought it would all be conquered, and you might never 
see anything to wound you." 

“ I know, dear," said Lucy. “ I know you never meant to 
make me unhappy. It is a trouble that has come on us all; 


560 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


you have more to bear than I have — and you gave him 
up, when — you did what it must have been very hard to 
do.” 

They were silent again a little while, sitting with clasped 
hands and cheeks leaned together. 

“ Lucy,” Maggie began again, “ he struggled, too. He 
wanted to be true to you. He will come back to you. For¬ 
give him — he will be happy then-” 

These words were wrung forth from Maggie’s deepest 
soul, with an effort like the convulsed clutch of a drowning 
man. Lucy trembled and was silent. 

A gentle knock came at the door. It was Alice, the maid, 
who entered and said, — 

“ I daren’t stay any longer, Miss Deane. They’ll find it 
out, and there’ll be such anger at your coming out so late.” 

Lucy rose and said, “ Very well, Alice, — in a minute.” 

“ I’m to go away on Friday, Maggie,” she added, when 
Alice had closed the door again. “ When I come back, and 
am strong, they will let me do as I like. I shall come to you 
when I please then.” 

“ Lucy,” said Maggie, with another great effort, “ I pray 
to God continually that I may never be the cause of sor¬ 
row to you any more.” 

She pressed the little hand that she held between hers, 
and looked up into the face that was bent over hers. Lucy 
never forgot that look. 

“ Maggie,” she said, in a low voice, that had the solemnity 
of confession in it, “ you are better than I am. I can’t-” 

She broke off there, and said no more. But they clasped 
each other again in a last embrace. 





CHAPTER V 

THE LAST CONFLICT 

I N THE second week of September, Maggie was again sit¬ 
ting in her lonely room, battling with the old shadowy 
enemies that were forever slain and rising again. It was 
past midnight, and the rain was beating heavily against the 
window, driven with fitful force by the rushing, loud- 
moaning wind. For the day after Lucy’s visit there had 
been a sudden change in the weather; the heat and drought 
had given way to cold variable winds, and heavy falls of 
rain at intervals; and she had been forbidden to risk the 
contemplated journey until the weather should become more 
settled. In the counties higher up the Floss the rains had 
been continuous, and the completion of the harvest had been 
arrested. And now, for the last two days, the rains on this 
lower course of the river had been incessant, so that the old 
men had shaken their heads and talked of sixty years ago, 
when the same sort of weather, happening about the equi¬ 
nox, brought on the great floods, which swept the bridge 
away, and reduced the town to great misery. But the 

561 


562 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


younger generation, who had seen several small floods, 
thought lightly of these sombre recollections and forebod¬ 
ings; and Bob Jakin, naturally prone to take a hopeful 
view of his own luck, laughed at his mother when she re¬ 
gretted their having taken a house by the river-side, ob¬ 
serving that but for that they would have had no boats, 
which were the most lucky of possessions in case of a flood 
that obliged them to go to a distance for food. 

But the careless and the fearful were alike sleeping in 
their beds now. There was hope that the rain would abate 
by the morrow; threatenings of a worse kffid, from sudden 
thaws after falls of snow, had often passed off, in the ex¬ 
perience of the younger ones; and at the very worst, the 
banks would be sure to break lower down the river when the 
tide came in with violence, and so the waters would be car¬ 
ried off, without causing more than temporary inconven¬ 
ience, and losses that would be felt only by the poorer sort, 
whom charity would relieve. 

All were in their beds now, for it was past midnight; all 
except some solitary watchers such as Maggie. She was 
seated in her little parlor toward the river, with one candle, 
that left everything dim in the room except a letter which 
lay before her on the table. That letter, which had come 
to her to-day, was one of the causes that had kept her up 
far on into the night, unconscious how the hours were go¬ 
ing, careless of seeking rest, with no image of rest coming 
across her mind, except of that far, far-off rest from which 
there would be no more waking for her into this struggling 
earthly life. 

Two days before Maggie received that letter, she had 
been to the Rectory for the last time. The heavy rain 
would have prevented her from going since; but there was 
another reason. Dr. Kenn, at first enlightened only by a 
few hints as to the new turn which gossip and slander had 
taken in relation to Maggie, had recently been made more 
fully aware of it by an earnest remonstrance from one of 
his male parishioners against the indiscretion of persisting 
in the attempt to overcome the prevalent feeling in the 


THE FINAL RESCUE 


563 


parish by a course of resistance. Dr. Kenn, having a con¬ 
science void of offence in the matter, was still inclined to 
persevere, — was still averse to give way before a public 
sentiment that was odious and contemptible; but he was 
finally wrought upon by the consideration of the peculiar 
responsibility attached to his office, of avoiding the appear¬ 
ance of evil, — an “ appearance ” that is always dependent 
on the average quality of surrounding minds. Where these 
minds are low and gross, the area of that “ appearance ” is 
proportionately widened. Perhaps he was in danger of act¬ 
ing from obstinacy; perhaps it was his duty to succumb. 
Conscientious people are apt to see their duty in that which 
is the most painful course; and to recede was always painful 
to Dr. Kenn. He made up his mind that he must advise 
Maggie to go away from St. Ogg’s for a time; and he per¬ 
formed that difficult task with as much delicacy as he could, 
only stating in vague terms that he found his attempt to 
countenance her stay was a source of discord between him¬ 
self and his parishioners, that was likely to obstruct his use¬ 
fulness as a clergyman. He begged her to allow him to write 
to a clerical friend of his, who might possibly take her into 
his own family as governess; and, if not, would probably 
know of some other available position for a young woman 
in whose welfare Dr. Kenn felt a strong interest. 

Poor Maggie listened with a trembling lip; she could say 
nothing but a faint “ Thank you, I shall be grateful ”; and 
she walked back to her lodgings, through the driving rain, 
with a new sense of desolation. She must be a lonely wan¬ 
derer; she must go out among fresh faces, that would look 
at her wonderingly, because the days did not seem joyful 
to her; she must begin a new life, in which she would have 
to rouse herself to receive new impressions; and she was so 
unspeakably, sickeningly weary! There was no home, no 
help for the erring; even those who pitied were constrained 
to hardness. But ought she to complain? Ought she to 
shrink in this way from the long penance of life, which was 
all the possibility she had of lightening the load to some 
other sufferers, and so changing that passionate error into 


564 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


a new force of unselfish human love? All the next day she 
sat in her lonely room, with a window darkened by the 
cloud and the driving rain, thinking of that future, and 
wrestling for patience; for what repose could poor Maggie 
ever win except by wrestling? 

And on the third day — this day of which she had just sat 
out the close — the letter had come which was lying on the 
table before her. 

The letter was from Stephen. He was come back from 
Holland; he was at Mudport again, unknown to any of his 
friends, and had written to her from that place, enclosing 
the letter to a person whom he trusted in St. Ogg’s. From 
beginning to end it was a passionate cry of reproach; an ap¬ 
peal against her useless sacrifice of him, of herself, against 
that perverted notion of right which led her to crush all his 
hopes, for the sake of a mere idea, and not any substantial 
good, — his hopes, whom she loved, and who loved her 
with that single overpowering passion, that worship, which 
a man never gives to a woman more than once in his life. 

“ They have written to me that you are to marry Kenn. 
As if I should believe that! Perhaps they have told you 
some such fables about me. Perhaps they tell you IVe been 
* travelling? My body has been dragged about somewhere; 
but I have never travelled from the hideous place where 
you left me; where I started up from the stupor of help¬ 
less rage to find you gone. 

“ Maggie! whose pain can have been like mine ? Whose 
injury is like mine ? Who besides me has met that long look 
of love that has burnt itself into my soul, so that no other 
image can come there ? Maggie, call me back to you! Call 
me back to life and goodness! I am banished from both 
now. I have no motives; I am indifferent to everything. 
Two months have only deepened the certainty that I can 
never care for life without you. Write me one word; say 
‘ Come! 5 In two days I should be with you. Maggie, have 
you forgotten what it was to be together, — to be within 
reach of a look, to be within hearing of each other’s voice ? ” 

When Maggie first read this letter she felt as if her real 


THE FINAL RESCUE 


565 


temptation had only just begun. At the entrance of the 
chill dark cavern, we turn with unworn courage from the 
warm light; but how, when we have trodden far in the damp 
darkness, and have begun to be faint and weary; how, if 
there is a sudden opening above us, and we are invited back 
again to the life-nourishing day ? The leap of natural long¬ 
ing from under the pressure of pain is so strong, that all 
less immediate motives are likely to be forgotten — till the 
pain has been escaped from. 

For hours Maggie felt as if her struggle had been in vain. 
For hours every other thought that she strove to summon 
was thrust aside by the image of Stephen waiting for the 
single word that would bring him to her. She did not read 
the letter; she heard him uttering it, and the voice shook her 
with its old strange power. All the day before she had been 
filled with the vision of a lonely future through which she 
must carry the burthen of regret, upheld only by clinging 
faith. And here, close within her reach, urging itself upon 
her even as a claim, was another future, in which hard en¬ 
durance and effort were to be exchanged for easy, delicious 
leaning on another’s loving strength! And yet that prom¬ 
ise of joy in the place of sadness did not make the dire force 
of the temptation to Maggie. It was Stephen’s tone of 
misery, it was the doubt in the justice of her own resolve, 
that made the balance tremble, and made her once start 
from her seat to reach the pen and paper, and write 
“ Come! ” 

But close upon that decisive act, her mind recoiled; and 
the sense of contradiction with her past self in her moments 
of strength and clearness came upon her like a pang of con¬ 
scious degradation. No, she must wait; she must pray; the 
light that had forsaken her would come again; she should 
feel again what she had felt when she had fled away, under 
an inspiration strong enough to conquer agony, — to con¬ 
quer love; she should feel again what she had felt when 
Lucy stood by her, when Philip’s letter had stirred all the 
fibres that bound her to the calmer past. 

She sat quite still, far on into the night, with no impulse 


566 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


to change her attitude, without active force enough even 
for the mental act of prayer; only waiting for the light that 
would surely come again. It came with the memories that 
no passion could long quench; the long past came back to 
her, and with it the fountains of self-renouncing pity and 
affection, of faithfulness and resolve. The words that were 
marked by the quiet hand in the little old book that she 
had long ago learned by heart, rushed even to her lips, and 
found a vent for themselves in a low murmur that was 
quite lost in the loud driving of the rain against the win¬ 
dow and the loud moan and roar of the wind. “ I have re¬ 
ceived the Cross, I have received it from Thy hand; I will 
bear it, and bear it till death, as Thou hast laid it upon 
me.” 

But soon other w’ords rose that could find no utterance 
but in a sob, — “ Forgive me, Stephen! It will pass away. 
You will come back to her.” 

She took up the letter, held it to the candle, and let it 
burn slowly on the hearth. To-morrow she would write to 
him the last word of parting. 

“ I will bear it, and bear it till deatfc But how long it 
will be before death comes! I am so young, so healthy. 
How shall I have patience and strength? Am I to struggle 
and fall and repent again? Has life other trials as hard for 
me still? ” 

With that cry of self-despair, Maggie fell on her knees 
against the table, and buried her sorrow-stricken face. Her 
soul went out to the Unseen Pity that would be with her 
to the end. Surely there was something being taught her by 
this experience of great need; and she must be learning 
a secret of human tenderness and long-suffering, that the 
less erring could hardly know? “0 God, if my life is to 
be long, let me live to bless and comfort-” 

At that moment Maggie felt a startling sensation of sud¬ 
den cold about her knees and feet; it was water flowing un¬ 
der her. She started up; the stream was flowing under the 
door that led into the passage. She was not bewildered for 
an instant; she knew it was the flood! 


THE FINAL RESCUE 


567 


The tumult of emotion she had been enduring for the 
last twelve hours seemed to have left a great calm in her; 
without screaming, she hurried with the candle upstairs to 
Bob Jakin’s bedroom. The door was ajar; she went in and 
shook him by the shoulder. 

“ Bob, the flood is come! it is in the house! let us see if 
we can make the boats safe.” 

She lighted his candle, while the poor wife, snatching up 
her baby, burst into screams; and then she hurried down 
again to see if the waters were rising fast. There was a step 
down into the room at the door leading from the staircase; 
she saw that the water was already on a level with the 
step. While she was looking, something came with a tre¬ 
mendous crash against the window, and sent the leaded 
panes and the old wooden framework inward in shivers, the 
water pouring in after it. 

“ It is the boat! ” cried Maggie. “ Bob, come down to 
get the boats! ” 

And without a moment’s shudder of fear, she plunged 
through the water, which was rising fast to her knees, and 
by the glimmering light of the candle she had left on the 
stairs, she mounted on to the window sill, and crept into 
the boat, which was left with the prow lodging and pro¬ 
truding through the window. Bob was not long after her, 
hurrying without shoes or stockings, but with the lanthorn 
in his hand. 

“ Why, they’re both here, — both the boats,” said Bob, 
as he got into the one where Maggie was. “ It’s wonderful 
this fastening isn’t broke too, as well as the mooring.” 

In the excitement of getting into the other boat, un¬ 
fastening it, and mastering an oar, Bob was not struck with 
the danger Maggie incurred. We are not apt to fear for 
the fearless, when we are companions in their danger, and 
Bob’s mind was absorbed in possible expedients for the 
safety of the helpless indoors. The fact that Maggie had 
been up, had waked him, and had taken the lead in activity, 
gave Bob a vague impression of her as one who would help 
to protect, not need to be protected. She too had got pos- 


568 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


session of an oar, and had pushed off, so as to release the 
boat from the overhanging window-frame. 

“ The water's rising so fast,” said Bob, “ I doubt it’ll be 
in at the chambers before long, — th’ house is so low. I’ve 
more mind to get Prissy and the child and the mother into 
the boat, if I could, and trusten to the water, — for th’ old 
house is none so safe. And if I let go the boat — but you,” 
he exclaimed, suddenly lifting the light of his lanthorn on 
Maggie, as she stood in the rain with the oar in her hand 
and her black hair streaming. 

Maggie had no time to answer, for a new tidal current 
swept along the line of the houses, and drove both the boats 
out on to the wide water, with a force that carried them far 
past the meeting current of the river. 

In the first moments Maggie felt nothing, thought of 
nothing, but that she had suddenly passed away from that 
life which she had been dreading; it was the transition of 
death, without its agony, — and she was alone in the dark¬ 
ness with God. 

The whole thing had been so rapid, so dreamlike, that 
the threads of ordinary association were broken; she sank 
down on the seat, clutching the oar mechanically, and for a 
long while had no distinct conception of her position. The 
first thing that waked her to fuller consciousness was the 
cessation of the rain, and a perception that the darkness was 
divided by the faintest light, which parted the overhanging 
gloom from the immeasurable watery level below. She was 
driven out upon the flood, — that awful visitation of God 
which her father used to talk of; which had made the night¬ 
mare of her childish dreams. And with that thought there 
rushed in the vision of the old home, and Tom, and her 
mother, — they had all listened together. 

“ 0 God, where am I ? Which is the way home ? ” she 
cried out, in the dim loneliness. 

What was happening to them at the Mill? The flood had 
once nearly destroyed it. They might be in danger, in dis¬ 
tress,— her mother and her brother, alone there, beyond 
reach of help! Her whole soul was strained now on that 


THE FINAL RESCUE 


569 


thought; and she saw the long-loved faces looking for help 
into the darkness, and finding none. 

She was floating in smooth water now, — perhaps far on 
the overflooded fields. There was no sense of present danger 
to check the outgoing of her mind to the old home; and she 
strained her eyes against the curtain of gloom that she might 
seize the first sight of her whereabout, — that she might 
catch some faint suggestion of the spot toward which 
all her anxieties tended. 

Oh, how welcome, the widening of that dismal watery 
level, the gradual uplifting of the cloudy firmament, the 
slowly defining blackness of objects above the glassy dark! 
Yes, she must be out on the fields; those were the tops, of 
hedgerow trees. Which way did the river lie? Looking be¬ 
hind her, she saw the lines of black trees; looking before 
her, there were none; then the river lay before her. She 
seized an oar and began to paddle the boat forward with the 
energy of wakening hope; the dawning seemed to advance 
more swiftly, now she was in action; and she could soon 
see the poor dumb beasts crowding piteously on a mound 
where they had taken refuge. Onward she paddled and 
rowed by turns in the growing twilight; her wet clothes 
clung round her, and her streaming hair was dashed about 
by the wind, but she was hardly conscious of any bodily 
sensations, — except a sensation of strength, inspired by 
mighty emotion. Along with the sense of danger and pos¬ 
sible rescue for those long-remembered beings at the old 
home, there was an undefined sense of reconcilement with 
her brother; what quarrel, what harshness, what unbelief in 
each other can subsist in the presence of a great calamity, 
when all the artificial vesture of our life is gone, and we 
are all one with each other in primitive mortal needs? 
Vaguely Maggie felt this, in the strong resurgent love to¬ 
ward her brother that swept away all the later impressions 
of hard, cruel offence and misunderstanding, and left only 
the deep, underlying, unshakable memories of early union. 

But now there was a large dark mass in the distance, and 
near to her Maggie could discern the current of the river. 


570 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


The dark mass must be — yes, it was — St. Ogg’s. Ah, now 
she knew which way to look for the first glimpse of the well- 
known trees — the gray willows, the now yellowing chest¬ 
nuts— and above them the old roof! But there was no 
color, no shape yet; all was faint and dim. More and more 
strongly the energies seemed to come and put themselves 
forth, as if her life were a stored-up force that was being 
spent in this hour, unneeded for any future. 

She must get her boat into the current of the Floss, else 
she would never be able to pass the Ripple and approach the 
house; this was the thought that occurred to her, as she 
imagined with more and more vividness the state of things 
round the old home. But then she might be carried very 
far down, and be unable to guide her boat out of the current 
again. For the first time distinct ideas of danger began to 
press upon her; but there was no choice of courses, no room 
for hesitation, and she floated into the current. Swiftly 
she went now, without effort; more and more clearly in the 
lessening distance and the growing light she began to dis¬ 
cern the objects that she knew must be the well-known 
trees and roofs; nay, she was not far off a rushing, muddy 
current that must be the strangely altered Ripple. 

Great God! there were floating masses in it, that might 
dash against her boat as she passed, and cause her to perish 
too soon. What were those masses? 

For the first time Maggie’s heart began to beat in an 
agony of dread. She sat helpless, dimly conscious that she 
was being floated along, more intensely conscious of the 
anticipated clash. But the horror was transient; it passed 
away before the oncoming warehouses of St. Ogg’s. She 
had passed the mouth of the Ripple, then; now, she must 
use all her skill and power to manage the boat and get it 
if possible out of the current. She could see now that the 
bridge was broken down; she could see the masts of a 
stranded vessel far out over the watery field. But no boats 
were to be seen moving on the river, — such as had been 
laid hands on were employed in the flooded streets. 

With new resolution. Maggie seized her oar, and stood up 


THE FINAL RESCUE 


571 


again to paddle; but the now ebbing tide added to the swift¬ 
ness of the river, and she was carried along beyond the 
bridge. She could hear shouts from the windows overlooking 
the river, as if the people there were calling to her. It was 
not till she had passed on nearly to Tofton that she could get 
the boat clear of the current. Then with one yearning look 
toward her uncle Deane’s house that lay farther down the 
river, she took to both her oars and rowed with all her 
might across the watery fields, back toward the Mill. Color 
was beginning to awake now, and as she approached the 
Dorlcote fields, she could discern the tints of the trees, could 
see the old Scotch firs far to the right, and the home chest¬ 
nuts, — oh, how deep they lay in the water, — deeper than 
the trees on this side the hill! And the roof of the Mill — 
where was it? Those heavy fragments hurrying down the 
Ripple, — what had they meant ? But it was not the house, 
— the house stood firm; drowned up to the first story, but 
still firm, — or was it broken in at the end toward the Mill ? 

With panting joy that she was there at last, — joy that 
overcame all distress, — Maggie neared the front of the 
house. At first she heard no sound; she saw no object mov¬ 
ing. Her boat was on a level with the upstairs window. She 
called out in a loud, piercing voice, — 

“ Tom, where are you ? Mother, where are you ? Here 
is Maggie! ” 

Soon, from the window of the attic in the central gable, 
she heard Tom’s voice,— 

“ Who is it ? Have you brought a boat ? ” 

“ It is I, Tom, — Maggie. Where is mother? ” 

“ She is not here; she went to Garum the day before yes¬ 
terday. I’ll come down to the lower window.” 

“ Alone, Maggie? ” said Tom, in a voice of deep astonish¬ 
ment, as he opened the middle window, on a level with the 
boat. 

“Yes, Tom; God has taken care of me, to bring me to 
you. Get in quickly. Is there no one else? ” 

“ No,” said Tom, stepping into the boat; “ I fear the man 
is drowned; he was carried down the Ripple, I think, when 


572 


MILL ON THE FLOSS 


part of the Mill fell with the crash of trees and stones 
against it; I’ve shouted again and again, and there has been 
no answer. Give me the oars, Maggie.” 

It was not till Tom had pushed off and they were on the 
wide water, — he face to face with Maggie, — that the full 
meaning of what had happened rushed upon his mind. It 
came with so over-powering a force, — it was such a new 
revelation to his spirit, of the depths in life that had lain 
beyond his vision, which he had fancied so keen and clear, 
— that he was unable to ask a question. They sat mutely 
gazing at each other, — Maggie with eyes of intense life 
looking out from a weary, beaten face; Tom pale, with a 
certain awe and humiliation. Thought was busy though the 
lips were silent; and though he could ask no question, he 
guessed a story of almost miraculous, divinely protected ef¬ 
fort. But at last a mist gathered over the blue-gray eyes, 
and the lips found a word they could utter, — the old child¬ 
ish “ Magsie! ” 

Maggie could make no answer but a long, deep sob of 
that mysterious, wondrous happiness that is one with pain. 

As soon as she could speak, she said, “ We will go to 
Lucy, Tom; we’ll go and see if she is safe, and then we can 
help the rest.” 

Tom rowed with untired vigor, and with a different speed 
from poor Maggie’s. The boat was soon in the current of 
the river again, and soon they would be at Tofton. 

“ Park House stands high up out of the flood,” said Mag¬ 
gie. “ Perhaps they have got Lucy there.” 

Nothing else was said; a new danger was being carried 
toward them by the river. Some wooden machinery had 
just given way on one of the wharves, and huge fragments 
were being floated along. The sun was rising now, and the 
wide area of watery desolation was spread out in dreadful 
clearness around them; in dreadful clearness floated on¬ 
ward the hurrying, threatening masses. A large company 
in a boat that was working its way along under the Tofton 
houses observed their danger, and shouted, “ Get out of the 
current! ” 


THE FINAL RESCUE 


573 


But that could not be done at once; and Tom, looking 
before him, saw death rushing on them. Huge fragments, 
clinging together in fatal fellowship, made one wide mass 
across the stream. 

“ It is coming, Maggie! ” Tom said, in a deep, hoarse 
voice, loosing the oars, and clasping her. 

The next instant the boat was no longer seen upon the 
water, and the huge mass was hurrying on in hideous tri¬ 
umph. 

But soon the keel of the boat reappeared, a black speck 
on the golden water. 

The boat reappeared, but brother and sister had gone 
down in an embrace never to be parted; living through 
again in one supreme moment the days when they had 
clasped their little hands in love, and roamed the daisied 
fields together. 


CONCLUSION 


Nature repairs her ravages, — repairs them with her sun¬ 
shine, and with human labor. The desolation wrought by 
that flood had left little visible trace on the face of the 
earth, five years after. The fifth autumn was rich in golden 
cornstacks, rising in thick clusters among the distant hedge¬ 
rows; the wharves and ware-houses on the Floss were busy 



574 MILL ON THE FLOSS 

again, with echoes of eager voices, with hopeful lading and 
unlading. 

And every man and woman mentioned in this history was 
still living, except those whose end we know. 

Nature repairs her ravages, but not all. The uptorn trees 
are not rooted again; the parted hills are left scarred; if 
there is a new growth, the trees are not the same as the old, 
and the hills underneath their green vesture bear the marks 
of the past rending. To the eyes that have dwelt oh the 
past, there is no thorough repair. 

Dorlcote Mill was rebuilt. And Dorlcote churchyard — 
where the brick grave that held a father whom we know, 
was found with the stone laid prostrate upon it after the 
flood — had recovered all its grassy order and decent quiet. 

Near that brick grave there was a tomb erected, very soon 
after the flood, for two bodies that were found in close em¬ 
brace; and it was visited at different moments by two men 
who both felt that their keenest joy and keenest sorrow were 
forever buried there. 

One of them visited the tomb again with a sweet face be¬ 
side him; but that was years after. 

The other was always solitary. His great companionship 
was among the trees of the Red Deeps, where the buried joy 
seemed still to hover, like a revisiting spirit. 

The tomb bore the names of Tom and Maggie Tulliver, 
and below the names it was written, — 

“ In their death they were not divided.” 


NOTES 


1. the broadening Floss, really the Trent, the third most im¬ 
portant river in England, rising in Staffordshire and joining the 
Ouse to form the Humber. 

I. St. Ogg’s, really Gainsborough, a shipbuilding and manufactur¬ 
ing town in Lincolnshire. 

4. Ladyday, March 25, the day of the festival of the Annuncia¬ 
tion of the Virgin Mary. It is one of the four English quarter days, 
on which rent payments are due, the others being June 24 (Mid¬ 
summer Day), September 29 (Michaelmas Day), and December 25 
(Christmas Day). 

7. the little wench. George Eliot’s father often used this as a 
term of affection for her. 

8. Bedlam, crazy. In London an asylum for the insane, the 
priory of St. Mary of Bethlehem , had its name corrupted into this 
synonym for lunacy. 

10 . bonhomie, a French word for “good nature.” 

10. Old Harry, the devil. 

II. rampant Manichaeism. This religion, founded by a Persian 
named Mani, taught that good and evil were equal powers, strug¬ 
gling for the soul of man. Rampant is unchecked, unrestrained. 

11. Hotspur. In Shakespeare’s Henry IV. Hotspur, the son of 
the first Earl of Northumberland, is a fiery, hot-tempered person. 

14. History of the Devil. George Eliot as a girl read this book 
by the author of Robinson Crusoe in much the fashion here described. 

14. Jeremy Taylor, a famous clergyman of the seventeenth century 
— Emerson calls him “the Shakespeare of divines.” 

15. Pilgrim’s Progress. John Bunyan’s book, one of the most 
famous and widely read in English literature, is an allegory of the 
life of a Christian (the hero’s name is Christian), from his conversion 
to his death. He flees from the City of Destruction, meets many 
perils, and finally reaches the Celestial City. 

17. Oxford man. For many centuries Oxford and Cambridge 
were the only English universities, and to attend one of them was 
a sign of wealth and gentility. 

22. JEneid, Virgil’s famous poem, in which the escape of Aeneas 
from Troy and his voyage to Italy, there to found a new state, are 
described. De Senectute (pronounce as four syllables) is a noted 
essay on old age by the great Roman orator Cicero. 

25. Fetish, some object, worshipped by savages and supposed by 
them to possess magical or supernatural powers. 

25. Jael, a Hebrew heroine in the Old Testament, who killed 
Sisera, an enemy of her people, with a tent pin. See Judges, iv, 21. 

575 


576 


NOTES 


26. Pythoness. After Apollo slew the Python (a monstrous ser¬ 
pent) near Delphi, that place was sometimes called Pytho, and the 
priestesses of his temple there were named Pythias and Pythonesses. 
When inspired by the god, they would often go into a sort of frenzy 
or ecstasy. 

26. auricula, a primrose, sometimes called “ bear’s-ear.” 

26. au naiurel, in its natural condition (French). 

28. nash, dialect for “chilly.” 

29. The Prodigal Son. His story is told in the New Testament, 
Luke, xv. 

29. Sir Charles Grandison, a character in Samuel Richardson’s 
eighteenth-century novel by that name. He is represented as hav¬ 
ing so many charms and virtues as to be unbelievable. 

33. Samson. See Judges, xiii-xvi, for an account of this hero 
and his encounters with the Philistines. 

40. the awful Eagre, a wave of great height and violence passing 
up a river with flood tide; sometimes called a “bore.” 

40. Christiana, the wife of Christian in The Pilgrim's Progress. 
In Part Two of that story she leaves the City of Destruction in quest 
of her husband. 

44. tipsy cake, a cake made of pastry and almonds, saturated 
with wine. 

53. Rhadamanthine, a son of Zeus and Europa in Greek myth. 
As a mortal he showed such a keen sense of justice that, after his 
death, he became one of the judges of the underworld. 

55. chevaux-de-frise. A French military term, used to indicate 
a piece of timber set with spikes or spears as a protection against 
charges or other attacks. In the eighteenth century the term was 
used to designate the jagged edges of women’s dresses. 

67. Ajax, a hero of the Trojan War in Greek myth. When the 
armor of the slain Trojan warrior Hector was awarded to Ulysses 
and not to him, he went mad with vexation. In his insanity he 
fought a flock of sheep, which he took for soldiers. Later he com¬ 
mitted suicide. 

72. obfuscated, confused, bewildered. 

72. baronet, a British degree of dignity below a baron and above 
a knight. Both knights and baronets are entitled to prefix their names 
with Sir, but the baronet’s right to do so is hereditary. 

77. causticity, extreme severity of language, from caustic, a sub¬ 
stance which burns or corrodes. 

80. murrain, a pestilence or plague affecting domestic cattle. 

81. Whitsuntide, the week beginning with Whitsunday, the seventh 
Sunday and fiftieth day after Easter. 

83. Alsatia. What is here referred to is not the region Alsace, 
over which France and Germany have so long disputed, but White- 
friars in London, which at one time was a sanctuary for insolvent 
debtors and lawbreakers. 

90. circumstantial evidence, evidence not based on direct testi- 


NOTES 


577 


mony of the senses, but on accompanying circumstances or events 
which, according to common experience, usually attend the fact in 
issue. “A trout in the milk,” said Thoreau, ‘‘is circumstantial evi¬ 
dence.” 

94. chef-d’oeuvre, masterpiece (French). 

96. tete-a-tete. Literally, in the French, “head to head”; in 
other words, intimately or familiarly. 

96. Aristotle, a famous Greek philosopher, a disciple of Plato, and 
a forerunner of modern science. 

96. minatory, threatening. 

97. Ulysses. When Ulysses, in Homer’s Odyssey, finally managed 
to reach the land of the Paseacians, he was welcomed by the Princess 
Nausicaa, who treated him kindly and gave him directions as to how 
to reach the palace of her parents. 

99. small demons. Seven devils were exorcised in Matthew, xvi, 9. 

104. Medusa, one of the three Gorgons in Greek myth. They 
had serpents on their heads instead of hair, and whoever looked at 
their hideous faces was instantly turned to stone. Perseus slew 
Medusa, and her head was worn thereafter by the goddess Minerva 
as part of her shield, the jEgis. 

108. corpus delicti, a Latin legal term, signifying “the body of 
the crime, the substantial or fundamental fact of the crime.” 

114. Apollyon, the Greek name of Abaddon, the angel of the 
bottomless pit ( Revelation , ix, 11). In The Pilgrim's Progress, Part 
One, he is an evil spirit with whom Christian has a terrible encounter, 
out of which the latter emerges victorious. 

122. Leonore. In the German poet Burger’s poem “Lenore” 
(translated into English by Scott and others), a ghost lover appears 
after death to his sweetheart and carries her on horseback behind 
him to the graveyard, where their marriage is celebrated amid a 
goblin crew. 

124. classic pastorals, poems in Greek or Latin dealing with 
shepherd life. 

124. millennial tree, a tree that grows for a thousand years. 

124. sea-kings, the Norse Vikings, in this case the Danes who 
conquered part of England and finally met their match in Alfred, 
the Saxon hero king. 

124. tumulus, a burial mound. 

126. Loyalists. Puritans or Roundheads were the opponents in 
the English Civil War of the Loyalists or Cavaliers, the latter favor¬ 
ing the cause of the Stuarts. 

134. Baxter’s Saints’ Everlasting Rest. Richard Baxter, a seven¬ 
teenth-century divine, wrote a large number of books on religion, of 
which the one mentioned was most popular. 

135. preterite, belonging to the past, bygone. The term is at 
present used chiefly in grammar. 

139. (Edipus, a character in Greek myth, as to whom oracles 
predicted a dreadful destiny. His father tried to help him escape 


578 


NOTES 


this destiny, and he himself struggled against it, but all was in vain. 
At the end (Edipus put out his own eyes and roamed the earth in 
misery, until the gods released him. 

140. arabesques, ornaments derived from Arabic or Moorish art. 

140. “ my name is Norval.” Norval is a character in John Home’s 
once popular tragedy, Douglas. One speech in this, beginning, ‘ ‘ My 
name is Norval; on the Grampian hills my father feeds his flocks,” 
became very popular as a recitation piece. 

142. Massillon and Bourdaloue, two noted French theologians, 
whose sermons were studied by later divines. 

142. evangelicalism. The evangelicals are those Protestants who 
think that the essence of the Gospel is the atonement of Christ, the 
necessity of a new birth, and redemption by faith. In 1846 there was 
formed in England an Evangelical Union, to uphold ‘‘the views 
commonly called evangelical.” Among the aims of the union was 
the maintenance of religious liberty throughout the world and help 
to the persecuted. 

143. provincialisms, ways of speaking confined to a certain sec¬ 
tion, deviations from the standards of language. 

146. Broderip. William John Broderip, an English naturalist of 
the early nineteenth century, wrote Zoological Recreations and Leaves 
from the Note-Book of a Naturalist. 

146. Euclid, a Greek mathematician, author of a geometry that is 
still the basis of all modern treatises and textbooks. 

146. prebends, prebendaries — clergymen attached to a collegiate 
or cathedral church and in receipt of a prebend or daily allow¬ 
ance. 

147. etymology and demonstrations. The former term here refers 
to the rudiments of grammar; the latter to the courses of reasoning 
employed in mathematics, especially geometry. 

148. Delectus, a book of selected passages, for those learning 
Greek or Latin. 

148. Romans. Tom is of course thinking of the book by this 
name in the New Testament. Did the book have any connection 
with the people so called? 

149. supines, a verbal noun, particularly in Latin. 

150. nodus, literally, ‘‘a knot” (Latin); a complication, a diffi¬ 
culty. 

150. calenture, fever; delirium. 

155. peccavi , I have sinned (Latin). 

156. Mors omnibus est communis, Death is common to all. 

157. ‘Appellativa arborum .’ These are sentences taken from the 
old Latin grammar used at Eton and elsewhere. They give the rules 
in Latin for the gender of nouns; the names of trees are masculine, 
as are the names of birds. Tom, however, gives some examples not 
altogether correct. 

161. limbo, the border of Hades; sometimes a synonym for 
Hades. 


NOTES 579 

175. Speaker , The Speaker, a book of selections for recitation, by 
W. Enfield, is referred to. 

175. Socrates, a great Greek philosopher, master of Plato and 
Xenophon. He elicited truth by questioning his hearers, and it 
was said of him by Cicero that “he brought down philosophy from 
heaven.” He was, nevertheless, found guilty by the Athenians of 
impiety, and was condemned to death in 399 b.c. 

175. David and Goliath and Samson. The first is a shepherd lad 
who slew the giant Goliath; later he became king of Israel. For the 
last see note to page 33. 

175. Odyssey. This epic, by Homer, relates the adventures of 
Ulysses on his return from the siege of Troy to his home in Ithaca 
— a journey that lasted ten years. On one occasion he and some 
of his fellows were held prisoner by a one-eyed giant in a cave and 
escaped by blinding him. 

176. Richard Coeur-de-Lion, etc., all famous heroes, — Richard 
the Lion-Hearted, one of the rulers of England and the leader of a 
Crusade; Saladin, one of his Saracen opponents and a most noble- 
hearted warrior; William Wallace, Robert Bruce, and James Doug¬ 
las, brave Scotch fighters. 

176. bandy, probably hockey; possibly tennis. The word is 
sometimes used for either sport. 

177. Hal of the Wynd, in Scott’s Tales of a Grandfather, Chapter 
XVII. Sometimes identified with the hero of the same author’s 
Fair Maid of Perth. According to tradition this fourteenth-century 
character, a smith by trade, was a vigorous free-lance soldier. 

177. Bannockburn, scene of a famous battle, in which the Scotch 
under Robert Bruce defeated the English (1314). 

178. epithets and similes. Epic poetry, in which much fighting 
is described, is filled with vivid adjectives and lengthy comparisons. 

181. Virgil, the greatest of Latin poets, whose JZneid is generally 
studied in advanced Latin classes. 

181. divinse particulum aurae, portion of the divine breath or air. 

182. Theodore Hook. Hook was a humorous novelist of the period 
in which this story is laid. He was also noted as a wit and practical 
joker. 

182. Peninsular. The Peninsular War, fought in the Spanish 
Peninsula from 1807 to 1814, was part of England’s struggle against 
Napoleon. In this war the Duke of Wellington attained great fame 
by his victories at Talavera and elsewhere, attaining a climax in 
1815 by his defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo (1815). 

183. Iliad, Homer’s great epic, in which he relates an important 
episode in the last year of the war against Troy; Hector is the great¬ 
est of the Trojan heroes that appear in it, Achilles the greatest 
warrior among the Greeks. 

183. Bony, a name often given in England to Napoleon Bona¬ 
parte. 

183. Badajos. In 1811 the English and their allies were besieging 


580 


NOTES 


this city in Spain, but were obliged by the French to withdraw. In 
the spring of the next year Wellington captured the city. 

183. General Wolfe. General James Wolfe was a noted English 
soldier, who fought in various European wars during the eighteenth 
century. He was sent to America to take Quebec from the French; 
and although successful in the battle of the Plains of Abraham, he 
was mortally wounded in the hour of victory. 

184. Jupiter . . . Semele. Jupiter fell in love with this daughter 
of Cadmus, and she bore him Dionysus, the god of wine. She re¬ 
quested the god of thunder to appear before her in his true form; 
he complied, and she was consumed to ashes. 

185. Arne’s. Thomas Augustus Arne was a noted English com¬ 
poser of the eighteenth century. He wrote the music for the British 
national anthem, “Rule, Britannia.” 

191. paternosters. The Lord’s Prayer opens in Latin with the 
words, “ Pater noster.” 

196. Philoctetes. In Greek myth Philoctetes was a great friend 
of the famous hero Hercules, who bequeathed to him a sheaf of 
poisoned arrows. He joined the Greeks in the Trojan War. But 
Philoctetes was bitten by a serpent, and the wound, ulcerating, be¬ 
came so offensive that the Greeks abandoned him on an island. 
Later they had to send for him, inasmuch as an oracle declared that 
they could never take Troy without him. He came to Troy, killed 
the Trojan prince Paris with one of his arrows, and so began the 
series of disasters that led to the fall of the city. 

215. Teraphim, a Hebrew word, in the plural signifying house¬ 
hold gods or idols. 

216. “ have the bailiff in the house.” In the United States it is 
generally a constable who acts as the sheriff’s deputy against persons 
who cannot pay their debts. 

242. His Knife to the Oyster. Pistol says, in Shakespeare’s The 
Merry Wives of Windsor: 

Why, then, the world’s mine oyster, 

Which I with sword will open. 

247. Horae Paulinae. A religious work, in Latin, by William Paley, 
an eminent theologian of the eighteenth century, whose Evidences 
of Christianity was long accepted as a standard work. 

247. Blair’s Rhetoric. Hugh Blair was a noted Scotch divine, 
who in 1762 became professor of rhetoric in the University of Edin¬ 
burgh. His Lectures on Rhetoric was widely used as a textbook for 
several generations. 

247. usher, an underteacher or assistant in a school. 

247. panniers, carry wicker baskets like a donkey. 

252. nunc illas promite vires, now put forth your strength. 

253. Dominie Sampson, a character in Scott’s Guy Mannering , 
described as “a poor, modest, humble scholar, who had won his way 
through the classics, but had fallen to the leeward in the voyage of 
life.” 


NOTES 


581 


260. packman, a peddler carrying a pack. 

263. Allocaturs, it is allowed (Latin); a phrase attached to a 
writ or other legal document, expressing the approval of the court. 

263. Chancery, a high court of justice. 

269. a priori, a Latin phrase, meaning here “without a determin¬ 
ing examination.” 

273. roach, a European fresh-water fish of the carp family. 

273. sang froid, “cold blood” (French); that is, coolness, freedom 
from agitation. 

277. “ moithering,” a variation for “moidering,” perplexing, 
worrying. 

277. “mushed,” a dialectal word for “exhausted, confused.” 

277. Saturnalian, merry, enjoyable. The Saturnalia among the an¬ 
cient Romans was a feast day marked by unrestrained merry-making. 

281. Nemean lion. One of the famous exploits of the Greek hero 
Hercules was to slay the Nemean lion, a terrible monster that had 
been ravaging the valley of Nemea. He could make no impression 
with his club, and so he caught it in his arms and squeezed it to 
death. He wore the skin of the beast thereafter as a mantle. 

291. Bossuet, the most famous of all French preachers. He took 
part in many of the religious controversies of the seventeenth cen¬ 
tury, and in particular made a close analysis of Protestant dogmas, 
with the idea of refuting them. 

293. emmet-like. An emmet is an ant. 

295. fromenty, usually spelled “frumenty” — a dish of hulled 
wheat boiled in milk, with sugar, plums, etc. 

296. Pitt, the famous English statesman, of the late eighteenth 
and early nineteenth century, who conducted the war against Na¬ 
poleon. 

300. pillory. The pillory was a framework with holes left for a 
person’s head and hands. Criminals were confined in pillories and 
exposed to public view. 

304. sawney, a dialectal word for “fool” or “clown.” 

308. Burke’s grand dirge. Burke, who had been so energetic in 
defending the cause of the American Revolution, was deeply op¬ 
posed to the French Revolution, because it seemed to him that it 
violated all principles of chivalry and of order. His views were 
expressed in Reflections on the Revolution in France and Letters on a 
Regicide Peace, to the latter of which George Eliot probably refers. 

309. Telemaque. The Adventures of Telemachus was a French 
prose epic by Archbishop Fenelon, often used as a school book. It 
recounted the experiences of the son of Ulysses in search of his father. 

309. Scott’s novels and Byron’s poems. These were exceedingly 
popular in the earlier part of the nineteenth century. 

310. Eutropius, a Latin historian, author of a history of Rome. 

310. Aldrich. Henry Aldrich was an English author of the seven¬ 
teenth century, who composed a textbook on logic. 

312. The Spectator. This famous periodical, conducted by Joseph 


582 


NOTES 


Addison and Sir Richard Steele at the beginning of the eighteenth 
century, became a model of style for succeeding writers and greatly 
influenced the development of the essay, the newspaper, and the 
novel. 

312. Rasselas, a novel by Dr. Samuel Johnson, in which he 
shows the vanity of human wishes. 

312. Economy of Human Life, a series of precepts and lessons on 
conduct, sometimes attributed to Robert Dodsley, sometimes to 
Lord Chesterfield. 

312. Gregory’s Letters, those of Pope Gregory XII. 

312. Christian Year. John Keble, a noted nineteenth-century 
English divine, wrote a series of poems by this name, designed to 
fit the various festivals and seasons of the religious calendar. 

312. Thomas a Kempis, usually regarded as the author of the 
famous religious work, Imitation of Christ. 

314. mysticism or quietism, the doctrine that God may be ex¬ 
perienced directly, without the use of the reason. It involves con¬ 
templation and a discipline of the soul in which desire is renounced, 
and peace attained by prayer, self-mortification, and renunciation 
of worldly goods and pleasures. 

314. crinoline vortices. The reference is to the huge hoop skirts 
worn at this time. 

315. Faraday. Michael Faraday was a great English scientist of 
the first half of the nineteenth century. He made many important 
discoveries in chemistry and electricity, and was a popular lecturer. 

316. ekstasis. The Greek word from which “ecstasy” is derived. 
It means the state of being beyond oneself, under the influence of 
some powerful emotion; often a condition of mystical vision, when 
one has cognizance of things divine. 

320. tares, weeds that grow in grain fields. 

324. that makes one think, etc. A sentiment to be found in many 
poets — Dante, Mrs. Browning, and Tennyson, among others. The 
last-named says: 

And a sorrow’s crown of sorrows is remembering happier 
things. 

328. doubleness. The more common word is duplicity, “insin¬ 
cerity,” “deception.” 

330. The Pirate. This novel by Scott is laid in the wild country 
of the Shetland Islands and is concerned with a pirate, his sons, and 
their love affairs. The incident here related of Maggie occurred in 
George Eliot’s own youth. 

331. asceticism, self-denial; mortification of the flesh (such as 
fasting, abstinence from pleasure, etc.), for religious motives. 

334. Hecuba. Hecuba’s son Hector was killed by Achilles within 
sight of the people of Troy. 

335. bottoms, the part of a ship under water; by synedoche often 
used, as here, for the ship itself. 

335. Industrious Apprentice. William Hogarth, famous eighteenth- 


NOTES 583 

century artist, drew a series of twelve engravings showing the Idle 
and the Industrious Apprentice. 

352. bathos, a laughable descent from the sublime to the ridicu¬ 
lous; an anticlimax. 

355. Hamadryad, in Greek mythology a creature who lived in a 
tree and died when the tree died; a tree nymph. See poems on this 
subject by Landor and Lowell. 

357. sotto voce, in an undertone (Italian). 

360. Hunger Tower. Dante, in The Divine Comedy , tells a re¬ 
pulsive story of how Count Ugolino and his three sons were starved 
to death in a tower and how the count finally committed cannibalism. 

361. Corinne. The subtitle of this novel by Madame de Stael 
(a French writer who died in 1817) is Italy, and the book is famous 
for its descriptions of that country. Corinne’s lover marries her 
younger sister Lucile instead, and Corinne grieves herself to death. 

361. tenth Muse. The Muses in Greek mythology were nine in 
number; and a compliment is often paid to a woman (especially of 
literary gift) by naming her “the tenth muse.” Among women so 
complimented have been Madeleine de Scudery and Anne Bradstreet. 

361. Rebecca and Flora Maclvor and Minna, all heroines in Scott’s 
novels— Ivanhoe, Waverley, and The Pirate respectively. 

378. Pharisee, a somewhat misunderstood sect of the ancient Jews. 
They set themselves apart and attempted to regulate their lives by the 
strict letter of the law. Some became arrogant and looked on them¬ 
selves as better than other men. Others were hypocritical, and are 
often denounced in the New Testament. 

394. Hercules. To punish the Greek hero for an offense he had 
committed, he was bound as a slave to Queen Omphale for three 
years. He fell in love with her, and led an effeminate life spinning 
wool for her, while she wore his famous lion’s-skin mantle. 

394. da capo. From the beginning (Italian). 

395. Beatrice. The name of the Italian lady to whom Dante paid 
his Platonic devotion, the subject of many of his short poems and 
one of the chief figures in his Divine Comedy. 

398. Lucifer. Lucifer is said to have been the name of Satan be¬ 
fore he was cast out of heaven. Isaiah in the Bible applies this name 
to the king of Babylon, of whom he says: “ How art thou fallen from 
heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! ” 

398. Turpin, the notorious highwayman, Dick Turpin. 

398. The Creation. An oratorio by the noted Austrian com¬ 
poser Joseph Haydn. Originally performed at Vienna in 1798, it 
immediately created a tremendous sensation, and speedily became 
familiar all over Europe. 

404. Marie Antoinette, queen of France at the time of the French 
Revolution and a victim of the guillotine. 

406. Pinnock. William Pinnock was a Staffordshire textbook 
writer of the early nineteenth century. His Catechisms or short 
encyclopedias were especially popular. 


584 


NOTES 


406. Geoffrey Crayon. Washington Irving published The Sketch- 
Book in 1821 under the pen name of “Geoffrey Crayon, Gent.” 

412-413. Anglican. . . Dissenters, an Anglican is a member of the 
Established Church of England; an Episcopalian, that is. A Dis¬ 
senter is a member of any other denomination, especially a Protestant. 

413. Southey. Robert Southey, a noted English writer of the 
early nineteenth century. Among his works is the biography of 
Cowper mentioned in the text, Cowper being a poet of the late 
eighteenth century, author of The Task and many briefer poems. 

413. Bridgewater Treatises , eight treatises published under an 
endowment from the Earl of Bridgewater. They dealt with matters 
of religion; among them was one on geology and religion by William 
Buckland, dean of Westminster. 

416. Purcell. Henry Purcell, the greatest English composer of 
the seventeenth century, wrote forty operas and masques and much 
melodious chamber music. 

417. ‘Nut-brown Maid,’ one of the most widely known of old 
English ballads. It tells how the nut-brown maid was wooed by a 
knight who told her that he was a banished man, with many enemies 
to face and many hardships to bear. But her love remained steadfast, 
and she offered to share all his troubles. He then revealed himself to 
be an earl’s son, with large estates. 

421. Sir Andrew Aguecheek. A comical character in Shakespeare’s 
Twelfth Night. He is a fool and a fop. He speaks the line, “I was 
adored once, too.” 

436. gaucherie, awkwardness — literally “left-handedness” 
(French). 

437. Novalis. This was the pen name used by Friedrich von 
Hardenberg, a German romantic poet and novelist of the late 
eighteenth century. 

437. Hamlet. The famous character in Shakespeare, by his in¬ 
decisiveness, brought about his own ruin and that of the reigning house 
of Denmark. 

440. Miss Sophia Western, the heroine of Fielding’s Tom Jones. 
Tom Jones, after many wild adventures, comes back and marries 
her. She is the model English girl of her period — beautiful, tender¬ 
hearted, cultivated, and perhaps a bit too yielding for our taste. 

441. direct taxation. Since the World War British taxpayers have 
turned over through the income tax huge sums directly. A sales 
tax or a custom duty would be an indirect tax. 

442. Maid of Artois. Michael William Balfe, an Irish composer 
of the nineteenth century, wrote this opera and many others. More 
famous is The Bohemian Girl. 

445. “Lives,” points scored or opportunities to score. 

454. Masaniello. The noted French composer Auber wrote this 
opera, which tells the story of a fisherman of Naples who led a revolt 
in 1647, ruled for nine days, and then was killed. 

456. Beggar's Opera. This opera by John Gay was produced in 


NOTES 


585 


1728 and has often been revived since. It deals with the corruptions 
of society. The hero is Captain Macheath, a highwayman, who 
finds himself very much embarrassed between Polly, his wife, and 
Lucy, to whom he has promised marriage. On this occasion he sings 
the famous song: 

How happy could I be with either, 

Were t’other dear charmer away. 

456. Sonnambula. An opera — the title means “ The Sleepwalker ” 
— by Vincenzo Bellini. The words in Italian quoted from this opera 
mean, “Ah, why can I not hate you? ” 

457. heads served up in a dish. Stephen is perhaps thinking of 
the story of Salome, daughter of Herodias, who so pleased her uncle 
Herod by her dancing that she won from him the gift of the head of 
the prophet John the Baptist on a platter. 

457. “Shall I,” etc., from a song by George Wither, a seventeenth- 
century poet. 

458. The Tempest. Mendelssohn, the great German composer, 
wrote music for Shakespeare’s play; and possibly it is this that is 
referred to in the text. 

475. “the giant Python.” The python was a monstrous serpent 
that ravaged the fields at the foot of Mount Parnassus. According to 
the Greek myth, Apollo slew the monster. 

477. canonicals or uncanonicals. Canonicals are the dress pre¬ 
scribed by cdnon for clergymen to wear while they are officiating at 
ceremonies. 

479. Correggio, a great Italian painter of the Renaissance period. 
His cherubs or little angels are noted for their sweetness and charm 
of face. 

484. Parthenon, the great temple in ancient Athens dedicated to 
Pallas Athene. Even in ruin it is regarded as one of the most splen¬ 
did works of art ever conceived by man. 

495. millennium, a Golden Age, of universal prosperity and hap¬ 
piness, when cockatrices (venomous serpents whose very glance was 
deadly) would become harmless, and even wolves grow friendly. 

498. muffineer, a dish in which muffins were kept warm; also a 
caster containing sugar or spices to sprinkle on muffins. 

505. “The thirst,” etc., from the well-known song by Ben Jonson, 
the most famous musical setting being that of Colonel Mellish. 

555. “a certain man.” The reference is to the story of the good 
Samaritan, Luke, x, 30-37. 

556. Peter. The Apostle of Jesus denied that he knew his master. 
See Luke, xxii. 

574. “In their death.” The quotation is from the account in 
2 Samuel, i, of the death of Saul and Jonathan, both killed in the Battle 
of Gilboa. “In their death they were not divided,” it is said. 


QUESTIONS ON THE STORY 

Book I 

1. Give a thumb-nail sketch (in about thirty words apiece) of three 
of the following: Maggie, Tom, Mr. Tulliver, Mrs. Tulliver, Mrs. 
Pullet, Mrs. Glegg, Mrs. Deane. 

2. Which of the characters that have appeared by the end of this 
book do you like best? Which one would it amuse you most to meet 
in real life? 

3. Which scene in this book is the most exciting? 

4. Do things happen in a plausible way? Would boys and girls 
behave in the way they are shown as behaving here? 

5. In what way do the characters of this story differ from Ameri¬ 
cans following similar occupations? Are English manners and cus¬ 
toms different from ours? In what ways? 

6. What events that occur in this book “cast their shadows be¬ 
fore” — prepare, that is, for future happenings? What hints as to 
the latter does George Eliot give the reader? 


Book II 

1. Would you like to get your education in the way that Tom did? 
What subjects did he study? How did his studies differ from those 
you follow? 

2. Is the character of Philip sympathetically portrayed? Do you 
prefer him to Tom? Is Tom justified in his attitude? 

3. Why did Philip like Maggie? Is it natural that she would show 
some liking for him? 

4. Which is the most dramatic and effective scene in the book? 
Does it make you eager to read on? 

5. Has George Eliot made it reasonable that Mr. Tulliver should 
ruin himself in the way he did? What flaws has his character? 

6. Which do you prefer, the account of the brother and sister or 
the account of Maggie and Philip? Give your reasons. 


Book III 

1. Discuss family feeling as shown in this section. Which are the 
most sympathetic? What contrasts does George Eliot present? 

2. How does George Eliot make you feel sorry for the Tullivers? 

3. Where else in the books you have read are there stories of feuds? 
Do such feuds ever become violent? 

586 


QUESTIONS ON THE STORY 587 

4. Was Mr. Tulliver justified in the resentment he felt against 
Mr. Wakem? 

5. What other characters in fiction does Bob Jakin remind you of? 
Did George Eliot invent him, do you suppose, or is he probably 
like some one she knew in Warwickshire? What touches make him 
especially lifelike? 

6. Ought Tom to have taken the vow to hate the Wakems forever? 

Book IV 

1. In what ways does Maggie develop while she and her family are 
passing through “the valley of humiliation”? 

2. Who in their time of distress shows the most acute sympathy 
for them? 

3. Why has George Eliot made this section a brief one? 

4. Are the sisters of Mrs. Tulliver right to hold back assistance 
from her family? Ought they to have given her immediately the 
money she was to get from them in their wills? 

Book V 

1. Ought Maggie to have engaged in deceiving her family as to her 
meetings with Philip? How does George Eliot analyze her motives? 

2. Compare the scene between Bob and Aunt Clegg with other hu¬ 
morous scenes in this novel. Which, in your judgment, is the most 
entertaining? 

3. Explain the business enterprise on which Tom now engaged. 
How did he and Bob expect to make money? 

4. Who would seem easier to win over to a reconciliation with a 
match between Maggie and Philip — her father or Philip’s? Why? 

5. Was Maggie, in your opinion, really in love with Philip? 

6. In real life today would a grown girl yield as readily as Maggie 
did to her brother’s command to break off relations with Philip 
Wakem? 

Book VI 

1. Ought Maggie to have made such a great sacrifice? What ill 
effects was it bound to have on her? 

2. Is it likely that Maggie would succumb to the charms of a man 
like Stephen Guest? What attractions did he have for her? 

3. What made Lucy blind to the course of events? 

4. Was Philip Wakem slow or ineffective? Could he have saved 
Maggie by acting more quickly? 

5. What is your final opinion of Mr. Wakem? Ought Tom to 
have changed his view of him? 

6. Is the most powerful scene of the novel in this book or in the 
one just preceding? 

7. Should Maggie have accepted Stephen’s proposal of marriage? 


588 


QUESTIONS ON THE STORY 


Book VII 

1. Can you justify Tom’s attitude? What persons were more sym¬ 
pathetic toward Maggie than her brother? 

2. Have people become more charitable in the passing of the years 
than the people of St. Ogg’s were? What episode in George Eliot’s 
life caused her to experience general disapproval at first? 

3. What qualities in Lucy cause one to admire her? 

4. Ought the story in some fashion to have ended happily, in your 
opinion? Why did George Eliot make it close in tragedy? 

5. Has the main interest of the story been the relationship of 
brother and sister or Maggie’s reactions to other men? How does 
the ending of the book agree with the answer you give? 

6. Would you have wanted George Eliot to expand her closing de¬ 
tails, or does your imagination supply all the information needed? 


TOPICS FOR THEMES, ORAL 
AND WRITTEN 


The exercises under this heading are arranged in three groups 
according to difficulty. Group A (for which a mark of Fair may be 
assigned) calls on the pupil to follow the course of the plot, to become 
acquainted with the characters, and to understand the meaning of 
the text. Group B (for which a mark of Good may be assigned) calls 
on the pupil to study the background of the story, to become ac¬ 
quainted with the Victorian Age and its traits, and to understand 
some of the less complicated relations of the characters. Group C 
(for which a mark of Excellent may be assigned) calls on the pupil to 
probe into the story for the problems it reveals, to evaluate George 
Eliot’s study of human nature, and to be able to discuss her comments 
on life. These groupings are, of course, tentative in character, and 
will be varied by the teacher to suit the needs and abilities of the 
pupils in a given class. It is likewise true that the method of treat¬ 
ment may make a difference: a topic in Group A may be treated 
with .sufficient skill to justify a grade of Excellent. 


Practice in Story-Telling 

A. 1. Several years after the episode described in Book I, Chapter 
X, Lucy Deane tells a friend (in the first person) how she fell in the 
mud. 

2. The St. Ogg’s Mercury published an account of the tragedy of 
the flood, with its climax in the death of Maggie and Tom. Write 
the story as it appeared in the newspaper. 

3. Recount in about seventy-five words some experience of your 
own similar to those listed on pp. 67-68. 

4. Philip and Tom, in the section called School-Time, talk over 
many interesting stories found in history and legend. Among those 
mentioned are the stories of David and Goliath, of Ulysses and 
Polyphemus, of Philoctetes, of Hercules and the Nemean lion, of the 
death of Hector, of Richard the Lion-hearted and Saladin, of William 
Wallace and Robert Bruce and James Douglas. Look up one of 
these, and tell it in a way that will show why Tom was interested in it. 

5. When the news of Maggie’s and Tom’s death reaches St. Ogg’s, 
Mr. Wakem is away from home. Philip writes him a letter to London, 
telling him about the sad event. What would he say in the letter, 
do you think? 

6. Of course many other entertaining incidents took place at Mr. 

589 


590 


TOPICS FOR THEMES 


Stelling’s home besides those mentioned by George Eliot in her 
account of Tom’s school life. Invent another incident and relate it. 

7. After Maggie’s death Philip visited her. tomb. Give an ac¬ 
count of him at that time. 

B. 1. With the help of a good map of England or of some guide to 
travel in England like Baedecker, plan a trip that will include places 
in the George Eliot country, particularly Gainsborough, Arbury 
Farm, and Coventry. Imagine yourself as starting from London or 
Liverpool. Mention some of the sights you would see. 

2. Many men of note and interest lived in the Victorian Age, and 
a number of them were friends of George Eliot’s. Select one of the 
following, and give an account of his life and career: Gladstone, 
Disraeli, Sir Robert Peel, Lord Palmerston, John Bright, Joseph 
Chamberlain, Lord Cromer, John Morley, General Gordon, Lord 
Kitchener, Charles Darwin, T. H. Huxley, John Tyndall, Lord Lister, 
Ruskin, William Morris, Tennyson, Browning, Matthew Arnold, 
D. G. Rossetti, Dickens, Thackeray, Charles Kingsley, Macaulay, 
Carlyle, Stevenson, Swinburne, Cardinal Newman, Sir Henry Ir¬ 
ving, G. F. Watts, Lord Leighton, Burne-Jones. 

3. Among the outstanding women of the Victorian Age were the 
following: Queen Victoria, Florence Nightingale, Elizabeth Barrett 
Browning, Harriet Martineau, Elizabeth Gaskell, the three Bronte 
sisters, Elizabeth Fry, Octavia Hill, Ouida (Louise de la Ramee) 
Ellen Terry, Mary Greenaway, Mary Howitt, and Lady Burdett- 
Coutts. Give an account of one of these. 

4. Relate some amusing incident, not told by George Eliot, of 
which Bob Jakin is the hero. 

5. Relate some incident, invented by you, in which one of the 
Dodson aunts and her husband are concerned. 

6. Between the close of Book V and the opening of Book VI a 
period of two years elapses, during which (as Lucy Deane tells 
Stephen) Maggie has been filling “a situation” — a position, as we 
call it in the United States. Possibly Maggie kept a diary during 
this period. Write some extracts for this diary, as you imagine 
Maggie would have written them. 

7. Imagine yourself an American boy or girl visiting England early 
in the eighties of the last century. You have an opportunity to talk 
for a few minutes to George Eliot, in her country home, The Heights, 
at Witley, near Godaiming. Describe your interview. 

C. 1 . Write a story called ‘‘Christmas Eve at the Tullivers.” 
Bring to bear as much information as you can gather regarding the 
celebration of the Yuletide in England of old. Use such sources of 
information as Dickens’s Christmas Stories and Irving’s The Sketch- 
Book. 

2. In the two-year interval at the close of Book V Maggie un¬ 
doubtedly had interesting experiences. Describe one of these, as 
nearly as possible in the style of George Eliot herself, and call it 
Chapter VIII. Give it an appropriate title. 


TOPICS FOR THEMES 


591 


3. Invent a similar chapter for the close of The Mill on the Floss, in 
which you describe the reconciliation of Lucy Deane and Stephen 
Guest some years after Maggie’s death. 

4. Write a short story, the scene of which is laid in an old English 
mill. 

5. Could a novel be written about the events of Bob Jakin’s life, 
including happenings after the close of The Mill on the Floss? Write 
an outline for such a novel — in about fifteen chapters, with about 
twenty to twenty-five words of summary for each chapter. Give each 
chapter and the novel itself appropriate titles. 

6. Imagine that you are an old friend of George Eliot and have 
paid her a visit shortly after the publication of The Mill on the Floss. 
You like the book very much, and you discuss with her what the 
life-lesson of the story is meant to be. 

7. Could the plot of The Mill on the Floss be used as the basis of a 
play? Work out the outline of a stage arrangement in three acts and 
not more than three scenes (two might be sufficient). Need you 
keep all the present characters? Can you show the final flood scenes? 
Would you make the ending a happy one? (Instead of a stage play, 
you may suggest the outline of a motion-picture drama.) 


Practice in Exposition 

A. 1. Compare The Mill on the Floss with some other novel you 
have read, as to the plot, the characters, the setting, and the general 
interest. 

2. Can you do the things that Tom can do, according to George 
Eliot? (See p. 147.) Write a little account, of your ability to per¬ 
form certain “ stunts.” 

3. Frame three search questions on Book I that would serve to test 
a person who had read The Mill on the Floss on his grasp of facts. 
For example, “ What kind of fish was it that Maggie caught? ” Frame 
three other search questions for Book II, three for Book III, two for 
Book IV, three for Book V, five for Book VI, and three for Book VII. 
Your idea is to “ catch ” some one, and prove he has not read carefully. 

4. Draw up a series of twelve true-false questions on The Mill on 
the Floss. For example, is the following statement true or false? — 
‘‘Mr. Tulliver refused to follow Mr. Riley’s advice as to a school for 
Tom.” Make half the statements true, half false. 

5. What items of food are mentioned in The Mill on the Floss? 
Draw up a list, and tell whether any are unfamiliar in this country. 

6. Discuss this topic: ‘‘The Housewife in George Eliot’s Times.” 

7. What does George Eliot mean, when, in speaking of the Tulli¬ 
ver family, she mentions their having a “ generous imprudence” ? Is 
imprudence ever to be commended? 

B. 1. Give an account of George Henry Lewes. Try, if possible, 
to read one of his books, in part at least. 

2. Discuss this topic: “Rural England, of Old and Today.” 


592 


TOPICS FOR THEMES 


3. Discuss one of the following topics: “Characteristics of Coven¬ 
try” or “The George Eliot Country.” 

4. Stephen Guest says (p. 441): “ The British public is not reason¬ 
able enough to bear direct taxation.” Is this still true? 

5. Make a list of some peculiarities in the dialect used by the 
characters of The Mill on the Floss. Do the people in any section of 
America talk as these characters do? 

6. Give an account of the British money system. Then reckon out 
what percentage of his debts Mr. Tulliver was able to pay, if his 
assets had shrunk to “not more than ten or twelve shillings in the 
pound.” 

7. Go over the book carefully, and list details as to the following 
wherever you find them mentioned: (a) industries and occupations 
of the characters of the book; (6) classes of society (are any members 
of the nobility mentioned?); (c) amusements; ( d ) politics; (e) odd 
customs. 

C. 1. Give an account of how a flour mill was carried on in the 
old days. One reference book you might consult is Bennett and 
Elton’s History of Corn Milling. Illustrate your account with dia¬ 
grams, if possible. 

2. How does education in your school differ from that in Tom 
Tulliver’s? (See the summary on pp. 246-7.) Are the same subjects 
taught? What is your view of the curriculum he followed? 

3. Compare the description of Christmas given by George Eliot 
at the beginning of Chapter II of Book II with that of Irving in 
The Sketch-Book and those of Dickens in his Christmas Stories. 

4. Put into your own words, with additional examples, the con¬ 
trast between romance and reality which George Eliot draws on 
pp. 291-2. 

5. Put into your own words George Eliot’s conception of tragedy 
as it occurs in lowly life. (See p. 210.) 

6. What, in your view, is the lesson in the life of Maggie Tulliver? 

7. Discuss this topic: Lessons in Human Nature from The Mill 
on the Floss. 

Exercises in Description 

A. 1. Locate the real scenes of The Mill on the Floss ( e.g ., Trent as 
the Floss) on a map of England. 

2. What are the appeals to each of the five senses in the following 
passages? — (1) the description of the river, p. 1; (2) the de¬ 

scription of the mill, p. 26; (3) the description of the wood, end of 
Chapter V, Book V; (4) the description of Christmas, opening of 
Chapter II, Book II. 

B. 1. Read one of the books mentioned in the reading list, and then 
write a theme on this topic: “Some Typical Warwickshire Scenes.” 

2. Follow the course of the River Trent on a map of England and 
mention some of the interesting places through which it flows. Tell 
for what things these places are noted. 


TOPICS FOR THEMES 


593 


C. 1. Mention some sounds in your own experience that prove 
the truth of George Eliot’s statement: “All long-known objects, even 
a mere window-fastening or a particular door-latch, have sounds 
which are a sort of recognized voice to us, — a voice that will thrill 
and awaken, when it has been used to touch deep-lying fibres.’’ 

2. Suppose you were the stage manager preparing the scenes in a 
play called The Mill on the Floss for production. One scene is in the 
Tulliver home. Mention the sets, properties, and other equipment 
you would get ready. 

Exercises in Discussion and Argumentation 

A. 1. Imagine a modern girl, with bobbed hair, telling Maggie’s 
aunts (p. 70 f.) about the advantages of cropped locks. What would 
she tell them? 

2. Do you agree with Mr. Stelling’s opinion of girl's on pp. 159-60? 
Did George Eliot agree with it, do you think? 

3. Is Mr. Deane’s description of how to succeed accurate? He 
says (p. 248): “If I got places, sir, it was because I made myself fit 
for ’em. If you want to slip into a round hole, you must make a ball 
of yourself; that’s where it is.” Give some examples of how this 
rule works out. 

4. Do you agree with Bob (p. 306) when he says to Maggie: “Hev 
a dog, Miss! — they’re better friends nor any Christian ”? Illustrate 
your answer from your own experience. 

5. Was Philip right in the arguments he offered to Maggie against 
her policy of self-denial (Book V, Chapter III)? Were his prophecies 
as to what would happen to her justified by later events? 

6. Ought Tom to have shown such uncompromising fidelity to his 
principles? 

7. George Eliot intimates, on the last page of The Mill on the Floss, 
that Lucy finally married Stephen Guest. Was Lucy right to do so, 
in your judgment? 

8. Is Stephen Guest, in your judgment, a cad? 

9. What, in your opinion, is the best example in The Mill on the 
Floss of George Eliot’s humor? Is it the things said or the things 
done that seem funny? 

B. 1. Is what George Eliot says about the “ bitter sorrows of child¬ 
hood” (p. 35) true, in your opinion? 

2. Are girls today like Tom’s description of them in the early 
Victorian era? (See p. 39: “All girls were silly,” etc.) 

3. Do you agree with George Eliot when she speaks of “that 
pleasure of guessing which active minds notoriously prefer to ready¬ 
made knowledge”? 

4. Do you agree with George Eliot’s view that “ the lines and lights 
of the human countenance are like other symbols, — not always easy 
to read without a key”? Compare what Shakespeare makes Dun¬ 
can say in Macbeth: 


594 


TOPICS FOR THEMES 


There’s no art 

To find the mind’s construction in the face. 

5. What is missing from the Dodson creed as stated by George 
Eliot on pp. 294 f.? What elements in it are of trivial importance, in 
your opinion? Did the Dodsons think these elements trivial? 

6. Do you agree with the opinion that “there is no feeling, per¬ 
haps, except the extremes of fear and grief, that does not find re¬ 
lief in music, — that does not make a man sing or play the better; 
and Philip had an abundance of pent-up feeling at this moment, as 
complex as any trio or quartet that was ever meant to express love 
and jealousy and resignation and fierce suspicion, all at the same 
time. ‘Oh, yes,’ he said, ‘it is a way of eking out one’s imperfect life 
and being three people at once, — to sing and make the piano sing, 
and hear them both all the while.’ ”? 

7. To what extent is the River Floss a symbol in the story? How 
often and where is it mentioned? 

8. From a study of George Eliot’s life, about what classes, do you 
conclude, would she know most? Would she be acquainted with the 
customs of the aristocracy? of city mechanics? About which classes 
does she write with greatest sureness in The Mill on the Floss? 

9. How do the customs of country folk in this novel differ from 
those of our own time and country? Make a list. (For example, 
do wives today call their husbands “ Mr.” as Mrs. Tulliver does on 
p. 4?) 

C. 1. Discuss this statement of George Eliot’s: “Iteration, like 
friction, is likely to generate heat instead of progress.” 

2. Do you believe, as Mr. Stelling did, that a knowledge of Latin 
grammar and of geometry is the best education for a person, no 
matter what his future business in life may be? Answer either 
affirmatively or negatively, with as much proof as you can muster. 

3. Could you give as true and honest a picture of your childhood 
as George Eliot does? Does her memory preserve many details? 
Does she look back to her earlier days with pleasure or regret? 

4. Select from this story some general remarks as to human na¬ 
ture, and tell whether you think they are true. (For example, “ Child¬ 
hood has no forebodings. . .sorrow,” p. 88; “It is only when. . .en¬ 
viable character,” p. 96; “If people are to quarrel often. . .certain 
limits,” p. 135.) 

5. Are characters affected by external circumstances, or would 
they be the same no matter what happened to them? Illustrate your 
answer by references to characters in The Mill on the Floss. 

6. Do the characters of The Mill on the Floss remain stationary, 
or do they evolve? Follow the course of any particular person in the 
book, and indicate what changes, if any, take place in his character. 

7. With what statement of George Eliot’s as to life or human 
nature do you most strongly disagree? Why? 

8. Look over the opinions of critics as to George Eliot and The 


TOPICS FOR THEMES 


595 


Mill on the Floss (see the Introduction), and discuss one of them in 
detail, telling why you agree or disagree with it, with reasons. 

9. George Eliot called herself a “Prisoner in the Castle of Despair” 
(referring to Bunyan’s Pilgrim's Progress) . Do the ideas she expresses 
in The Mill on the Floss bear out this gloomy idea of herself? Does 
she show any brighter moments? 

A Set of Projects 

1. Reading Projects, (a) Read Bunyan’s Pilgrim's Progress , with 
the specific purpose of explaining all the references to this great 
allegory in The Mill on the Floss. If you can do so, read also the 
fifty-sixth essay, dealing with this book, in James O’Donnell Ben¬ 
nett’s Much Loved Books. 

(b) To understand the foibles and weaknesses of the Victorian Age 
more thoroughly, one cannot do better than to read a Victorian 
satirist who amusingly exposed his own age to ridicule — W. S. 
Gilbert. Especially in point are his famous operas H. M. S. Pinafore, 
The Mikado, Patience, and Iolanthe. Read (or see performed) one 
or more of these, and bring in a report stating what they reveal as to 
the age of George Eliot. 

(c) As is pointed out in the introduction, The Mill on the Floss is 
in its main plot a new treatment of an old idea — the family feud, 
with members of the warring families falling in love with each other. 
This theme is treated in many stories, poems, and plays. Read, for 
example, Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, Keats’s “The Eye of St 
Agnes,” and John Galsworthy’s To Let. Compare the treatment in 
these with that of George Eliot. 

(d) You may be a wide and voracious reader: are you equal in 
your powers to Maggie? Here is a list of most of the books and events 
described in books referred to by Maggie or her creator in the course 
of The Mill on the Floss: The Bible: stories of Jael and Sisera, 
Samson, the Seven Demons, King David, Aaron, the Pharisees, Luci¬ 
fer, Raphael, Judas, the Good Samaritan, St. Peter. Greek Mythol¬ 
ogy: stories of Apollo and the Python, Rhadamanthus, Ulysses, the 
Siege of Troy, Hercules, Medusa, (Edipus, Philoctetes, Semele, 
Aeneas, Telemachus, the Hamadryads, the Saturnalia, the Muses. 
European History: the invasion of England by the Danes, King 
Alfred, the Norman Conquest, the Crusades, the wars between 
England and Scotland, the taking of Quebec by the English, the 
Napoleonic Wars, George IV. Individual Authors: Addison and Steele: 
The Spectator. The Arabian Nights. Baxter: Saints’ Everlasting 
Rest. W. J. Broderip: Zoological Recreations. Burger: Lenore. 
Bunyan: The Pilgrim’s Progress. Burke: Letters on a Regicide Peace. 
Cicero: On Old Age. Dante: The Divine Comedy. F6nelon: Ad¬ 
ventures of Telemachus. Gay: The Beggar’s Opera. John Home: 
Douglas. Homer: The Iliad, The Odyssey. Hook: Gilbert Gur¬ 
ney. Irving: The Sketch-Book. Johnson: Rasselas. Jonson: Song 


596 


TOPICS FOR THEMES 


to Celia. Keble: The Christian Year. Thomas a Kempis: Imi¬ 
tation of Christ. Molifere: The Miser. Percy: Reliques of Ancient 
British Poetry (Ballad of the Nut-Brown Maid). Richardson: Sir 
Charles Grandison. Scott: The Fair Maid of Perth, Waverley, The 
Pirate, Ivanhoe, Guy Mannering. Shakespeare: Henry IV, parts 
1 and 2; Twelfth Night, Hamlet, The Tempest, The Merry Wives 
of Windsor. Southey: Life of Cowper. Madame de Stael: Corinne. 
Taylor: Holy Living and Dying. Virgil: The iEneid. Withers: 
The Shepherd’s Resolution. With how many of these are you 
familiar? The reading of a number of them will increase your un¬ 
derstanding of The Mill on the Floss — as well as of many other books 
and of the things that happen in life. 

2. Drama Projects. Present, with such costumes and scenery as 
can be readily managed, one of the following scenes: (a) Mr. Tulliver 
and Mr. Riley. (6) Maggie at the Gypsies, (c) Maggie Meets 
Philip at Tom’s School, (d) The Family Council after Mr. Tulliver’s 
Ruin, (e) Maggie, Philip, and Tom at Red Deeps. (/) Maggie 
Meets Stephen. ( g ) Maggie and Lucy Meet for the Last Time. 

3. Drawing Project. Make three original drawings to illustrate 
scenes in The Mill on the Floss. 

4. Picture Project. Find pictures taken from magazines, or pic¬ 
ture postcards, or similar material that would serve to illustrate 
scenes in The Mill on the Floss, and tell at what points you would 
insert them. If you own your copy of this book, place them neatly 
in the text as insets. 

5. Music Project. What references to music do you find in The 
Mill on the Floss? Do you judge that George Eliot was a music 
lover? Make a list of the references, and arrange a brief George 
Eliot Musical Program. 

6. Puppet Project. Make puppets, such as might be used in a 
marionette performance of The Mill on the Floss, representing some 
of the chief characters in the story. (Tony Sarg has an interesting 
and useful little book on marionette shows and the making of the 
puppets.) 

7. Map Project. Draw a map of England, indicating scenes con¬ 
nected with George Eliot’s life and with The Mill on the Floss. If you 
have read other books by George Eliot, include any scenes mentioned 
in them that you can locate. 

8. Shop Project. Make a model of a flour mill. 

The Study of Words 

George Eliot was a master of style, with an exceedingly wide 
vocabulary. Students will find it of great value to study her diction 
in detail. 

1. How would Mr. Tulliver have talked if, in the first paragraph 
of Chapter II, Book I, he had spoken in ordinary standard English 
and not in his native dialect? Write down your version. 


TOPICS FOR THEMES 


597 


2. According to George Eliot, Maggie “ had so few books that she 
sometimes read the dictionary.” Is it possible to read a dictionary? 
Is there any profit in doing so? Try reading a column — every word 
of it; and tell what interesting facts you discovered. Why do some 
writers glance over a page or two of a dictionary before sitting down 
to compose? 

3. Discuss the question whether spelling should be “ a matter of 
private judgment” (p. 138), as it was with Mr. Tulliver and Mrs. 
Glegg. What objections are there to letting each person spell as he 
pleases? 

4. Find three other Latin words in English other than the one 
mentioned by Maggie on page 153. 

5. Find five other words in English that may mean several things 
— other than the one mentioned by Maggie on page 153. 

6. What would be a modern slang equivalent of Tom’s “ I believe 
you! ” on page 155? 

7. Tell in your own words what George Eliot meant by her de¬ 
scription of some people’s way of spelling (p. 179). 

8. Note the Hebrew plural im in Teraphim (chapter title, p. 215). 
What other Hebrew words in English have this plural? 

9. Explain Mr. Pullet’s mistake as to the word bell (p. 369). 

10. Do you agree with Maggie when she says: “ If we use common 
words on a great occasion, they are the more striking, because they 
are felt to have at once a particular meaning, like old banners, or every¬ 
day clothes, hung up in a sacred place ” ? 

11. What is the most unusual word in The Mill on the Floss? 

12. The following words, used in The Mill on the Floss, are some¬ 
times mispronounced. Look them up in the dictionary, and be sure 
as to both their meaning and pronunciation. 

(а) Peremptory, perspicacity, inextricable, epitome, dubitative, alac¬ 
rity, tenacity, harassed, fortuity, irrevocable. 

(б) poignancy, ignominy, obfuscated, funereal, cumulative, irrel¬ 
evant, dilapidated, contemplatively, acumen, illusory. 

(c) celebrity, magnanimous, ignominious, deference, susceptible, 
victual, tremor, fagade, incongruous, complacency. 

(d) hypocrisy, deficit, acquiescent, jejune, facetiousness, amicably, 
jocose, initiatory, regimen, extempore. 

(e) coiffure, incompetency, piqued, irrefragable, contravener, physi¬ 
ognomist, draughtsman, erudite, formidable, antipathy. 

(/) irremediably, impiety, abeyance, assignees, apathetic, tenacity, 
obloquy, unequivocal, ennui, eidolon. 

(g) irascible, vituperative, crotchets, paroxysm, coquette, conjugal, 
subterfuge, ascetic, clandestine, apropos. 

(h) amateur, vicissitudes, inexplicable, • gratuitous, incongruity, 
inexorable, malign, cajole, magnanimity, cockatrices. 


THE TECHNIQUE OF THE MILL 
ON THE FLOSS 


1. The Title. Before this novel was named The Mill on the Floss 
several other titles were considered — The Tullivers, or Life on the 
Floss; The House of Tulliver; St. Ogg’s on the Floss; and Sister 
Tulliver. Is the present title the best of the lot? Justify your answer. 

2. The Plot. Is the story told in the first or the third person? 
Does the author obtrude her opinions at all? Are her remarks of 
any value in themselves? Do they hinder or help the progress of the 
story? 

3. The Plot. What methods are employed to tell the story — 
diaries, letters, dialogues, direct narration of events? Is the progress 
constantly chronological, or does George Eliot sometimes go back to 
tell what happened before? 

4. The Plot. Are the explanations given at the beginning clear? 
Are they interesting? Is there too much description and exposition? 
At what point did you feel that you really wanted to know “what 
came next”? 

5. The Plot. Has The Mill on the Floss any subplots? Are the 
divisions into books that George Eliot makes natural ones? Are the 
events plausible? Does one episode follow another naturally? Which 
part of the book has the most pleasing plot? Does the plot grow 
out of the characters of the persons of the story, or are they affected 
and changed by outward events? What struggle is the center of the 
plot? 

6. The Plot. Should The Mill on the Floss have had a happy end¬ 
ing? Give your idea of what this happy ending might have been. 
Why didn’t George Eliot write the story that way? 

7. The Plot. George Eliot herself felt that she had written too 
fully — with too much epic expansiveness — in the first two-thirds 
of The Mill on the Floss, and that the last third ought to have been 
extended, in order to prepare more fully for the final tragedy. Do 
you agree with her? Does the ending come with too great a shock of 
surprise? 

8. The Characters. Name the most important characters in the 
story. Does George Eliot make you see these characters, and make 
you feel that they are as living as your next-door neighbor? Are any 
of the minor characters especially well-drawn? Do any of the 
characters act in a way. that seems to you improbable? 

9. The Characters. How does George Eliot tell you about the 
characters — by describing them, by having other people describe 
them, by letting them talk, or by allowing them to a'ut? Does she 
use a combination of these methods? Which character do you per- 

598 


TECHNIQUE 


599 


sonally like best? Which character do you care for least? Does a 
knowledge of these characters help you to understand real people? 

10. The Characters. George Eliot speaks of “the need of* being 
loved” as “ the strongest need in poor Maggie’s nature” (p. 36). Is 
this analysis correct? Did it apply to George Eliot herself? Prove 
your point. 

11. The Characters. Compare Bob Jakin with Huckleberry Finn. 
Did George Eliot understand Bob as well as Mark Twain understood 
Huck? 

12. The Characters. Show how the course of The Mill on the Floss 
bears out the truth of George Eliot’s denial of the remark of Novalis: 
“Character is destiny” (p. 437). Read the whole passage. 

13. The Characters. One critic states that “ George Eliot took 
great pains with her names.” Do you think that the characters in 
The Mill on the Floss are well-named? Should George Eliot, for 
example, have given her heroine some more dignified and impressive 
name than Maggie? Try to substitute Edith — or Millicent —- or 
Elizabeth — or Margaret. Did she have her own name Mary Ann in 
mind? Analyze the names of some of the other characters, and com¬ 
pare George Eliot with other novelists in this respect. 

14. The Characters. George Eliot once admitted the justice of a 
criticism that “ Maggie is made to appear too passive in the scene of 
the quarrel in the Red Deeps.” Do you agree that this scene needs 
to be rewritten from this viewpoint? 

15. The Characters. Is Lucy Deane a character that you like or 
dislike? Is she different in the earlier scenes from what she is in the 
last parts, or is her development natural? 

16. The Characters. What do you think of Stephen Guest? Is he 
merely a “hairdresser’s block, ” a window wax model, or has he flesh 
and blood? Does he possess any genuine and redeeming qualities? 

17. The Characters. Is it in true accordance with the character of 
Maggie that she should fall in love with Stephen Guest, a perfumed, 
cynical beau, despite the fact, moreover, that he was already practi¬ 
cally betrothed to her beloved cousin? George Eliot, it may be noted, 
justified Maggie’s conduct as that of “ a character essentially noble, 
but liable to great error — error that is anguish to its own nobleness.” 

18. The Characters. Do you agree with this opinion of Leslie 
Stephen? — “ The character of Tom is far from being a noble one, 
but it acquires a certain dignity from its patience, resoluteness, and 
sense of duty.” 

19. The Characters. Name characters in The Mill on the Floss that 
exemplify the following traits: stubbornness, kindliness, intelli¬ 
gence, family pride, stinginess, loyalty, friendliness, shrewdness, 
stupidity, greediness, deceitfulness, revenge, jollity, sympathy, 
bitterness, conceit, humor, pathos, practicality, snobbishness, charity, 
malice, helpfulness, self-reliance, self-sacrifice, nobility. 

20. The Setting. In what part of England is The Mill on the Floss 
laid? Do the d scriptions make you want to visit this region? What 


600 


TECHNIQUE 


are some odd customs of people in this section? How do they talk? 
What is the nature background? Does the setting of the story 
influence the plot or the characters? Does George Eliot use any 
part of the setting as a symbol? What nature scene in the story do 
you recall most vividly? 

21. The Setting. Local color in a novel gives the peculiarities of a 
region or its inhabitants — their customs, garb, speech, and other 
details. Mention some passages of local color. 

22. The Theme. What is the theme of The Mill on the Floss? How 
do the plot, the characters, and the setting bring out this theme? 
Does George Eliot sacrifice plausibility, or is her plot in any way 
artificial, because of her desire to work out her theme? 

23. The Style. Do you like George Eliot’s dialogues? For what 
purpose are they employed — to reveal character, to advance the 
plot, to afford humorous relief, to provide local color, or to build up 
the setting? Do people you know talk like George Eliot’s people? 
Is her command of dialect clever? Is her dialect hard to understand? 
Is it easier to understand when it is read aloud? Is her dialogue 
suited in each case to the character who speaks? v 

24. The Style. What are the most striking characteristics of George 
Eliot’s style outside of the dialogues? Is her diction mainly Anglo- 
Saxon or mainly Latin in its elements? Is she ever what is called 
“Johnsonian”? Quote some words or a passage in illustration. 
Which of the following qualities does her style, in your opinion, 
possess — pathos, humor, lightness, tendency to exaggeration, wit, 

^ sympathy, whimsicality, ease, brilliancy, cleverness, irony, coarse¬ 
ness, indignation, smoothness, quaintness? Is her meaning difficult 
to get? Is this due to the wording or the thought? Does her style 
reveal the personality of George Eliot? 

25. The Style. Why does George Eliot change to the present tense 
at the end of the first paragraph of Chapter VI? What is the effect? 

26. The Style. Tell what Oliver Elton means when he says that 
“often we exclaim that everyone in George Eliot’s books talks well 
except the author.. She is surest of her diction when she is somebody 
else.” 

27. The Type of Novel. What type of novel is The Mill on the 
Floss f Do you like this type? Compare it with other kinds of novels. 

28. The Author. Does a fiction writer use material taken from real 
life? Answer this question from what you know about George Eliot’s 
use of autobiographical material. (See the Introduction. Also see list 
of novels, pp. 601-603. 

29. The Author. As has been pointed out (see the Introduction), 
novelists often begin writing late in life, whereas poets begin early. 
Can you explain this? 

30. The Author. George Eliot used her real name on a title-page 
only in connection with a translation and with a book printed for 
private circulation. Why did she use a pen name? Would her own 
name have been better? 


SUGGESTIONS FOR ADDITIONAL 
READING 


Books about George Eliot 

Acton, Lord “George Eliot’s Life” (in Nineteenth Century, March 
1885) 

Bald, Marjory A. Women Writers of the Nineteenth Century 

Berle, Lina W. George Eliot and Thomas Hardy, a Contrast 

Blind, Matilde George Eliot 

Brownell, W. C. The Victorian Prose Masters 

Browning, Oscar Life of George Eliot 

Cooke, G. W. George Eliot 

Cross, J. W. George Eliot's Life and Letters, 2 vols. 

Deakin, M. H. The Early Life of George Eliot 

Haldane, Elizabeth S. George Eliot and Her Times 

Howells, W. D. Heroines of Fiction 

Mudge, I. G., and Sears, M. E. George Eliot Dictionary 

Paterson, Arthur George Eliot's Family Life and Letters 

Stephen, Leslie George Eliot 

Thomson, Clara L. George Eliot 

Walston, Charles “George Eliot” (in The Warner Classics: 
Novelists ) 

Woolson, Abba Gould George Eliot and Her Heroines 


Warwickshire and England 

Boynton, P. H. London in English Literature 
Collier, Price England and the English 
Irving, Washington The Sketch-Book 
James, Henry English Hours 
Laughlin, Clara So You're Going to England 
Lucas, E. V. A Wanderer in London 
Rann, E. G. The Homeland of English Authors 
Timmins, Samuel A History of Warwickshire 

Novels in Which the Authors Have Included 
Fragments of Autobiography 

Alcott, Louisa May Little Women 

Aldrich, Thomas Bailey The Story of a Bad Boy 

Bronte, Emily Wuthering Heights 

aoi 


602 


ADDITIONAL READING 


Butler, Samuel The Way of All Flesh 

Clemens, S. L. (“Mark Twain”) Tom Sawyer 

Dickens, Charles David Copperfield 

Howells, W. D. A Hazard of New Fortunes 

Kipling, Rudyard Stalky & Co. (connected short stories) 

London, Jack Martin Eden 

Maugham, W. Somerset Of Human Bondage 

Melville, Herman Redburn 

Melville, Herman Typee 

Meredith, George Evan Harrington 

Thackeray, W. M. Pendennis 

Novels of the Psychological Type 

Austen, Jane Emma 

Austen, Jane Pride and Prejudice 

Balzac, Honore de Pere Goriot 

Bronte, Charlotte Jane Eyre 

Conrad, Joseph Lord Jim 

Crane, Stephen The Red Badge of Courage 

Eliot, George Adam Bede 

Eliot, George Middlemarch 

Eliot, George Silas Marner 

Fisher, Dorothy Canfield The Bent Twig 

Gale, Zona Miss Lulu Belt 

Hawthorne, Nathaniel The Scarlet Letter 

Howells, W. D. The Rise of Silas Lapham 

James, Henry Daisy Miller 

Sudermann, Hermann Dame Care 

Novels Emphasizing Local Color 

Allen, James Lane A Kentucky Cardinal 

Barrie, Sir James M. The Little Minister 

Blackmore, R. D. Lorna Doone 

Cable, G. W. The Grandissimes 

Craik, Dinah Maria John Halifax , Gentleman 

Dickens, Charles Oliver Twist 

Eggleston, Edward A Hoosier School-Boy 

Fox, John The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come 

Gaskell, Elizabeth C. Cranford 

Glasgow, Ellen The Romance of a Plain Man 

Hardy, Thomas Under the Greenwood Tree 

Hergesheimer, Joseph Java Head 

Kipling, Rudyard Kim 

Marshall, Archibald The Squire's Daughter 

Poole, Ernest The Harbor 

Trollope, Anthony The Warden 


ADDITIONAL READING 


603 


Walpole, Hugh The Cathedral 
Westcott, E. N. David Harum 
Wharton, Edith The Age of Innocence 
Wister, Owen The Virginian 
Zangwill, Israel The Children of the Ghetto 




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